Here’s a good article that tries to explain why “bad” site design succeeds. The typical examples are Google and MySpace. But that article went one step further and included Flickr and Amazon as examples of bad site design. I use Flickr a lot, and I’ve never been shocked by its (lack of) design.
For me, Flickr has always been easy to use and rather intuitive. And it has often surprised me by offering useful features that I hadn’t even thought of (the flickr uploader, notes on photos, widgets, etc.). So if it’s convenient to use, and I was never bothered by its lack of pretty graphics (the photos make up for that), who am I to say that Flickr’s design is bad ?

Applying the same reasoning to MySpace, couldn’t you say that MySpace’s design is good ? Of course MySpace pages are ugly, but they are easily customisable, and that’s the feature users want most. The same goes for Google: it’s ugly, but it’s simple, and that’s what counts most for its users.

Now this is not to say that Google, MySpace, or Flickr cannot be improved. But maybe if the Flickr team had spent more time on making its stylesheets consistent across the site, it wouldn’t have had the time to develop the notes features. By definition, if MySpace was more standardized, it would be less customisable.

As the article states, if ugly sites succeed it’s because they provide something else. It just goes to show that often, that “something else” is the most important element in a succesful website.