Keep in mind, when this heuristic was written in 1994, there was no minimalist web-design trend. Let’s take a look at the other component of the heuristic, minimalist design. When used consistently, aesthetics can establish or reinforce a brand and its credibility. Aesthetics establish and reinforce your brand’s identity. As Don Norman has said, “attractive things work better.” This first impression is so powerful, that people often recall beautiful designs as easy to use despite potential usability issues that may have actually come up during use.ģ. The perception of the experience can be more memorable than the experience itself.

So, unfortunately, teams cannot rely only on good, usable functionality and content for an experience to be perceived as usable.Ģ. Visuals are essential to establishing good first impressions. As much as we would like otherwise, people do “judge the book by its cover.” On average, users make an aesthetics-driven first impression about a site in the 50 milliseconds after landing on it, which is about 10x faster than the time it takes to read. Why Not Just “Minimalist” Design? Do Aesthetics Really Matter?ġ. Every extra unit of information in an interface competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility. Interfaces should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” Don Norman cited this famous William Morris quote at the beginning of his book Emotional Design 1 and it captures the essence of the 8th usability heuristic: aesthetic and minimalist design:

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