Is aesthetics an important factor in a product's success?

Kate Bovk
1 reply
When starting a product and resources are limited, the question arises: is aesthetics important or should functionality be the main focus? šŸŽ› On one hand, the product must solve the problem and appearance may be secondary. šŸŽØ On the other hand, aesthetics is an important factor as people often choose with their eyes, even if it comes at the expense of functionality. What do you think is more important in the early stages of building a product?

Replies

Priyadarshi Shrivastava
In my opinion. a user has three requirements from a digital product- functionality, reliability, and usability. When UX practitioners work on usability, they focus on the user journey. Therefore, they arrange visual elements to meet the principles of good user flow. Skipping usability for just for aesthetics might (sometimes) not be a great idea. I think the path that usually works is to first get the functional flow correct, then make the flow reliable (handling all edge cases), then focusing on usability (using best practices of UX heuristics) and then fine tuning your visuals to make it aesthetically pleasurable. I think as a product we can't really avoid anything said above but depending on user base, one can actually reimagine as to which part one should focus more on. For example, a customer facing utility app (cab booking or food delivery) would have great visuals when you compare it with a dashboard app made for developers. I'm really keen to know and learn how others have dealt with maintaining this balance.