CHAPTER 1

IF YOU READ ONLY ONE CHAPTER, MAKE IT THIS ONE

IF YOU CAME ACROSS THIS BOOK and had time to read only one chapter, this would be the one for you. Why? Because it shows you the fastest way for you to improve your designs.

How it works is more important than how it looks

I know you probably came to this book looking for help with how to improve the look of your designs, but stick with me for a moment: the way your design works is more important than how it looks.

Take Craigslist, for example. The website largely hasn’t changed over the years, and the design appears very dated (FIGURE 1-1).

If how it looked were most important, Craigslist would have lost out years ago to any of the other shiny new classified ad websites that have popped ...

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