Is there beauty in ASCII art?
I like simple designs. Crowded pages are distracting, they move the user’s focus from content to presentation. This usually makes finding content ona site a chore rather than the natural function of the site.
I appreciate sites like NTK, craigslist, and Google becuase content is presented in a clean, straightforward fashion. They make good use of hyperlinking and try to help me find what I want. Material is neither hidden nor obfuscated. I wish that more sites would forget neat DHTML and Javascript tricks and simply present the user with information. Make the site easy to navigate, and provide hints about where a user might find additional information. If you want to keep a user at your site, give them something to see. Don’t make it a chore to find information or users will leave befor they really find what they want.
Visual design has its place. But I would rather have a easy to use site with no graphics and minimal layout then a beauftiful site with nothing to say.
Of course, I will accept that for some sites, design is their content. These sites may continure to ignore all of the above.