Insights / Design & Engineering
Good design Must Work.
Form / Function / Future
A beautiful site that doesn’t work isn’t good design.
Editorial study / NordiHouse on a screen
01 / The premiseForm follows function
Good design is good problem-solving.
A website is easy to judge from a screenshot and much harder to judge in use. The spacing can be perfect and the type lovely, and the site still fails the moment someone tries to work out what is on offer, fill in a form or find a phone number.
The difference is in decisions nobody notices: what comes first on a page, how a control behaves, how the page loads, whether the text has enough contrast, and whether the code underneath holds together.
How it looks is half of it.
Looks matter. They just can’t do the job alone. Plain words and a sensible order are what take someone from ‘what is this?’ to ‘I know what to do next’.
02 / What I believeWhat people remember
The standard / Not a style
Looks draw you in. Function keeps you.
Everything that matters on a page has to work on a slow connection, an old phone and a screen reader too, not only on the designer’s monitor.
A distinctive visual voice.
The brand is recognisable.
A predictable interaction model.
The product is usable.
03 / Four requirementsA short list
Four things I check.
01
Clarity.
The page makes sense without anyone explaining it.
02
Performance.
It loads fast, and nothing jumps around while it does.
03
Accessibility.
It works with a keyboard, a screen reader and large text.
04
Ownership.
In a year, someone else can still read the code and change the content.
04 / In practiceOne project, start to finish
Design the whole system.
NordiHouse is one example: the story, the pictures, the order of the content and the phone layout were designed together. Its pictures are illustrations, and no results are claimed for it.
View the NordiHouse case study
05 / The takeawayThe short version
Form / Function / Future
A beautiful site that doesn’t work isn’t good design.
When it works, nobody notices the effort. They find what they came for and leave.
Experiment / 001Start a conversation
Make it Matter.
I do the identity and the code myself, so they end up as one decision.
Start a project