In my limited experience, it seems that a smooth and enjoyable UI is far more important than the functionality of the product.

In just about every project I’ve worked on, whether for work, school, or a personal project, the first thing people will notice is how the application looks and feels–and they should! After all, you have to look at where to click before you can actually start clicking.

But why does UI and UX seem to hold more weight in the customer’s perspective than functionality? After all, they’re paying for a working application, right? Well here are some generalized observations I’ve made, though maybe not true 100% of the time.

A good UI hides bugs. If the UI looks great, it can mask even the worst of bugs in the code. And if there’s a small issue with the UI, then people will tend to dwell on that more than an even bigger bug in functionality.

This seems kinda backwards, right? But it makes sense–who wants to use a product that doesn’t look great? People know the technology exists for all these cool features via Apple, Google, Facebook, and many other tech companies.

People prefer a good UI over functionality. I wouldn’t be surprised if people favored an app that looks great and had NO functionality over an app that works perfectly with NO styles.

Take Apple’s mesmerizing scrolling animation used to present their latest iPhone for example. I’d much rather scroll up and down this page than use an application with no styles.

While we should never slack in the amount of effort we put into functionality, we must always keep in mind how much influence a good user experience can have on the client and their users.