Stop Asking Designers to "Make it Pretty"

Public Service Announcement: Please stop telling your designers to “make it pretty.”

Every time I hear that phrase, a UX bunny dies. Or at least bares its teeth.

Here’s what happened this week. We've been hard at work defining new processes we're about to roll out. Important, timely ones. I knew we needed a clear, consumable slide deck that would land with people. The version we had was a cobbled together jumble of slides from several different decks. Hard to scan. No headlines to carry the story. Unnecessarily long.

So I carefully rebuilt it. I honed the message, shaped the flow, and created visuals to help people grasp processes at-a-glance instead of puzzling through them. This wasn’t about “decorating,” it was about making sure our work had a fighting chance of being understood and adopted.

But after I insisted we take the time to overhaul the content, someone said, “Do we really need to take the time to make it pretty?”

Cue the angry bunny.

Let me be clear: aesthetics do matter. Researchers Masaaki Kurosu and Kaori Kashimura showed this way back in 1995 with ATM screens. Participants rated the most attractive screens as the easiest to use, even though all versions functioned the same. More recent studies confirm that visually appealing apps aren’t just liked more, they actually improve objective performance. Website research has shown that people form impressions in milliseconds, with beauty influencing perceptions of credibility and trustworthiness.

So yes, “pretty” is powerful. But when you toss the phrase around as a directive, it dismisses the strategy that goes into the craft.

Here’s what designers are really doing when you think we’re just sprinkling glitter:

• Making it understandable. Boiling down a jumble of content into memorable takeaways your audience will actually retain.

• Making it engaging. Converting a wall of text into a clean visual that guides the eye and makes people say, “Ohhh, now I get it.”

• Making it credible. Elevating the work to look as serious and thoughtful as it really is, so it isn’t dismissed before someone reads it.

That’s design.

I'll repeat this important PSA: Next time, skip “make it pretty.” Try saying what you truly need: Make it understandable. Make it engaging. Make it credible. Your designers will thank you. And UXer bunnies everywhere will stay significantly less stabby.