People ridiculously overvalue aesthetics and beauty when evaluating products. It's one of the reasons iPods, and, for that matter, Keanu Reeves, are so successful.
Joel SpolskyIf your goals is to produce something of permanent value, you start to think differently about you want on the site.
Joel SpolskyUsability is not everything. If usability engineers designed a nightclub, it would be clean, quiet, brightly lit, with lots of places to sit down, plenty of bartenders, menus written in 18-point sans-serif, and easy-to-find bathrooms. But nobody would be there. They would all be down the street at Coyote Ugly pouring beer on each other.
Joel SpolskyIf you can't understand the spec for a new technology, don't worry: nobody else will understand it either, and the technology won't be that important.
Joel Spolsky