What is Design?

It's two things.

How it looks, and

What it does.

I'm in my new apartment (rental, meaning the landlady and her favorite handyman / carpenter / electrical / designer have been responsible for everything in it) and a couple of things become immediately apparent -

It looks awesome. Excellent bathroom tile designs, sleek space age fittings, sliding-out cabinets, granite countertops, curved picture windows...

It doesn't feel right. Switches behind doors / beds, cupboard shelves too short to hang jackets, flush handles that dig into your back, corners to constantly bark your shins and bump your elbows and head, and you cannot for the life of you find a place to place your router or store your shoes...

It's tempting to go with the visual in design, and make your product look absolutely awesome, cutting-edge, latest, etc, etc. You look at photos of the new releases, the spring collection, the gorgeous photos in gadget-porn sites... and you create something that looks awesome... in the photoshoots.

The problem is, the designer is rarely the user - especially if you're doing one-off projects, contract jobs. The house is built, the car is revealed, the site is launched! Awards! Accolades! Promotions, incentives, bonuses! Praise all round!

Time rolls on, and slowly the complaints start trickling in... or even worse, complete silence. Sales start to drop, usage stats fall, traffic dwindles, gradually, and nobody knows why. Then it's a year, two years down, and you're considering relaunch...

User testing HAS to happen before, during, and after a redesign. Before, so you know if what you're trying to fix is the right thing; during, so it's the right way; and after, because obviously. The mistake most of us make is either do the initial design testing and hypotheses internally, or only test post-fact and try and force feedback to conform to predecided ideas and expectations, or accommodate with cosmetic fixes.

Moral of the story:

Get user feedback BEFORE redesign plans

Get actual users to review and respond to interim mockups and options to guide discussions

Ensure the designer is also a user

Last and definitely not least - and this is true of life, not just website design - do not be tempted by pretty faces alone, because along that path lie bruises, bumps, heartburn, headaches, and many conversations with Old Monk and self, starting with "where did I go wrong?"

Good looks =/= Good design.