Why I love ugly, messy interfaces — and you probably do too
Let’s say your goal is to make a global peer-to-peer commerce network. That’s a big, complicated project to tackle.

You could attempt to reduce your solution down to a minimal version, cutting out features and reducing density in the name of beauty and simplicity. Here’s a Craigslist redesign concept like that. (Designers sure hate Craigslist, don’t they? Has any other site had more unsolicited redesigns?)

Craigslist redesign concept by Aurélien SALOMON.

Or, you might decide that you really can’t cut features, because it’s more important to nail every use case you care about. (Remember, you have to support a huge number of scenarios to reach table stakes for this project.) Now beauty and simplicity are instantly a much lower priority. Making something useful comes first.

For another example, think of Photoshop. How many graphic designers who idolize Swiss Style also use Photoshop every day? Probably most of them. Yet Photoshop’s UI is the antithesis of minimal — it has more nasty junk drawers than your parents’ unkempt basement. It doesn’t matter at all, because people don’t come to Photoshop for inspirational UI. They use it to get the job done.

In other words, sometimes this isn’t so great:

When this is what you really need:
['Jonas Downey']
['UX', 'UI', 'Product Design']