In episode one, Kristin and Joel shake off their nervousness and talk through effective “bad” web design. A website that does not follow the current Cult of Design best practices may be doing a great job of serving the business, thankyouverymuch. In fact, when looked upon from the point of view of the most likely audience and their intent — say Joel’s dad — a website that looks “bad” is doing a great job of helping the viewer get around. Drop shadow be damned. Taken a step farther, good design may be confusing people to eke more sales out of them.

Show Notes:

• Harbor Freight Tools is a website that looks horrible to our web savvy eyes but is a sophisticated tool for a multi million dollar company. We infer that they know what they are doing.
• Design Hell, an Oatmeal cartoon that most web makers can sympathize with.
• Gruen Transfer, the “the moment when consumers enter a shopping mall and, surrounded by an intentionally confusing layout, lose track of their original intentions.”