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tim comments on (Rational) website design and cognitive aesthetics generally- why no uptake? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Is the premise that modern sites do not take studies on aesthetics/usability/effectiveness into account even true? I've moved into web development over the past 8 months or so and I regularly search for topics such as "log in vs sign in," "ok cancel button placement" and "optimal web page navigation."
It seems to me that there is no shortage of studies, opinions and hard evidence on display regarding the (in)effectiveness of particular web design choices. Granted not every google hit is going to cite a formal study, but a surprising amount do. Googling the above over the past ten minutes or so has given me references to a study on optimal text layout, a study on label placement/alignment, why dropdown menus apparently suck, and how presenting users with too many choices is detrimental to user engagment (admittedly this one was generalized to the web after the fact).
Right, the whole point is that there's a lot of studies, and professional web designers don't seem to use them.
But what are you basing that that off of? There are a ridiculous number of confounding factors that might explain why a particular website doesn't conform to the latest studies in web usability (money, time, the site gets tons of hits already, management is hard to talk to, etc) outside of "professional web designers don't seem to use [empirical web design data]."
And if you go beyond the web designers themselves then you are really just asking why companies/corporations don't tirelessly invest in making the best website possible.