There is a fairly heated debate going on at a company that I work for.
It started out as a discussion about why it is that most UX companies have such unattractive websites. Someone stated that "design is just 5% of UX."
That got one of the designers a bit heated up, and he said
“Making things pretty is only like %5 of user experience”. I don’t really agree with this, and it kind of makes my profession sound almost entirely redundant. It’s more than ‘making things pretty’. And it’s not ‘making things pretty’ for the sake of ‘making them pretty’. Most things, for the majority of us, are experienced very much through the eyes. If an experience is more easily digested, easier to navigate and interact with and become involved in … well then it’s a better user experience. How it works is very much how it looks, and vice versa.
What are your thoughts?