• by joe.h , March 31, 2010

I have been involved in several projects over the past year that involved creating and evaluating the design of web-sites and blogs. One of the key elements of a well-designed web-site is the content's "findability" (a term that I'm not entirely crazy about. It reminds me of Budweiser's awful "Drinkability" campaign). That is, it's vital that a webmaster make it easy for visitors to find what they're looking for on a site. Internet users are easily frustrated, and will usually leave a site that makes them work too hard.

For example, (via Web Pages That Suck) Mr. Bottles

I have no idea what the above site is actually about. Something to do with bottles, obviously. But I don't know what to do with the site, and I don't know where to look to find out. I can buy a t-shirt to support the eponymous Mister Bottles, but what am I helping him do?

Further exploration of Web Pages That Suck took me to a similarly overwhelming web-site: Ling's Cars

I can tell that this site is intended to lease automobiles to citizens of the United Kingdom, but the site is plainly a mess. Ling's Car site should have a seizure warning similar to those preceding video games. What differentiates Ling from so many other over zealous webmasters, however, is her self-consciousness. She responds to a user complaining about her eclectic layout thusly:

“Does everything have to be designed for dial-up and in such a boring manner? My website is carefully designed to polarise visitors. You polarise out. Some polarise in.”

Ling knows what she's doing. Ling consciously made her site overwhelming. The scattered, colorful, assault on the senses nature of the site is a representation of her personality. Apparently, it's working: Ling's business is growing, and if she actually delivers on her promise of affordable cars and good service, then she comes off as charmingly eccentric, rather than irritatingly incompetent.

Ling’s deliberately challenging web-site made me think of Boohbah Zone . The Zone is stripped of all the usual markers of a web-site. No links, tool-bars, or text are visible. The user has to figure out what to do by exploring the page, clicking on things that look interesting, and enjoying all the pretty colors. Sure it’s designed for pre-schoolers, but it represents a totally different attitude towards web-site design than is usually advocated in design communities.

After spending some time on Ling's site (as well as Boohbah's), I found myself charmed. Does anyone else have a soft-spot for these unorthodox websites, or are they just irritating? Does anyone know of other unusually or originally designed sites that actually manage to deliver content sensibly while looking different than the usual corporate site?