I’ve been visiting a lot of artistic sites lately, and the right half of my brain is impressed with the amazing visuals that some designers have created. The left brain, however: not so impressed.
Folks, this isn’t Myst. As much as I admire the creative impulse, if a user has to hunt around just to figure out how to navigate the site, they’ll be frustrated — and in many cases will give up. The challenge in a rapidly expanding Web universe is to be unique and edgy — thereby gaining word of mouth and cachet — without being so weird as to be unusable.
Here’s a compromise: be creative with the layout, color scheme and visual imagery of the site, but keep things simple when it comes to navigation, site purpose, and key tasks.
