I got into a debate at last night’s Port 80 meeting with another attendee over websites and the importance of design. Having mistakenly made the assumption that I was a designer (my background is in Front-End Development, which sits somewhere between designing and programming) my opponent explained to me how design served little purpose on the web and all people were interested in was information and being able to find it easily, therefore the only eyes we need to please are those of the search engine. Now, I am paraphrasing what was said but that was the gist of their argument.

My response was that design is required to make the information usable and easier to understand, to help the visitor make informed decisions. It’s all well and good to have a single page website with a white background, line after line of black text separated by some headings – it presents the information to the visitor. However, it does not encourage the visitor to actually read the text or engage them in your offering and it doesn’t help them find what they are looking for. more…