If the Design Confuses User, It Is Not Design at All

When you think about design, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? For me, and for many other designers i suppose it might be visuals, colours, typography, or clever layouts that catch your eye. In the beginning, I thought design was all about making something look “wow” but the more I experienced and observed, the more I realized something unsettling: a design can look stunning and still fail.

Because if the design leaves people confused, then it isn’t really design at all.

The Café Problem

Picture this: you walk into a café that looks straight out of a magazine. The decor is flawless, hanging lights, cozy corners, soft jazz in the background and you walk up to the counter, excited to order, and then… the menu feels like a puzzle, drinks are listed in odd categories, the font is barely readable, and you’re left staring at it, unsure whether a “classic blend” means coffee or tea.

That frustration you feel in that moment? That’s what happens when design forgets to serve the user. Beauty pulled you in, but confusion pushed you away and honestly, I’ve seen this same story play out across apps, websites, even simple things like product packaging.

Everyday Confusion Disguised as Design

I once saw some struggling with an ATM machine where the “cancel” button was bigger and brighter than the “proceed” button guess which one he kept pressing by mistake? I’ve seen ticket-booking websites where the dates are hidden behind endless pop-ups, making you feel like you’re solving a riddle instead of buying a bus ticket.

Even airports some of the busiest places in the world shows us this. In well-designed airports, signs guide you so smoothly you don’t even notice them. In poorly designed ones, you’re dragging your suitcase in circles, looking for Gate 23 while the clock ticks down, muttering under your breath about who decided to put tiny arrows in random corners.

And then there are things we use every day.

Design Failures at Home

Think about medicine packaging you’ve got two bottles sitting on the shelf both are white, both have small print, both come with a folded-up leaflet full of medical terms most of us don’t understand in a rush, it’s so easy to pick the wrong one painkillers when you meant vitamins and all because clarity took a backseat to “standard” design. A simple colour code or a clearer label could have solved it, but instead, the design leaves people guessing.

Or take microwaves why do most of them have a dozen confusing buttons when all we ever really use are two: “time” and “start”? It feels like a feature-packed design, but in reality, it’s clutter more isn’t better if people don’t know what half the buttons do.

TV remotes are another example rows and rows of tiny buttons, each labelled with an abbreviation that makes sense only to the engineers who made it, most of us use just the power button, volume, and channel up/down, The rest? Dead weight, right? Yet, we accept it as normal because “that’s how remotes are.”

Good design should be invisible, not a puzzle we learn to tolerate.

Why Clarity Always Wins

There’s this unspoken rule in design: people shouldn’t have to think too hard the best designs are almost invisible you don’t stop to admire them; you just use them naturally.

Think of something as ordinary as door handles a push door with a flat plate is instantly understood but put a handle on that same door and people will instinctively try to pull it, only to feel that awkward “oh, wrong way” moment that’s not a user mistake that is a design mistake.

The same goes for digital products, I’ve used apps with such creative navigation menus that I didn’t even realize they were menus it feels great on the surface, but if I need a tutorial just to figure out how to sign up, then the design has already failed.

The Trap of Overdesigning

Here’s where I think many of us including myself fall into trouble we want to impress, we want people to see our work and think, “This is unique” So, we keep adding: more features, more colours, more effects, more clever ideas, it feels safer to overdo it than to risk being “too simple”

But the truth is, simplicity takes more courage, cutting away what isn’t necessary can feel like stripping down your skills, like you’re not showing enough yet every time I see someone interact with something that just works, no hesitation, no extra thinking I’m reminded that restraint is often the real mark of good design.

Still Learning

I won’t pretend I’ve mastered this; I’m far from it I still catch myself getting carried away, polishing details that don’t actually help the user, or creating layouts that make sense to me but not to someone seeing it for the first time.

But I’ve started to pause and ask: if a completely new person came here, would they immediately understand what to do? If the answer is no, I know I need to step back and rethink.

And honestly, that’s the part I find exciting realizing that design isn’t a destination but a practice, every design I make is another chance to learn how to make things a little clearer, a little easier, and a little less about me and more about the people actually using it.

Because in the end, design that confuses people is just decoration. It may look good on the surface, but it won’t last, the designs that truly matter are the ones that quietly help, guide, and make life smoother.

I’m still learning how to create more of those and hopefully with every mistake and every new design, I’ll get closer to them. So the moral of all this is: At the end of every design, test it by putting yourself in the shoes of someone who’s never used that app, website, or whatever you just built. If you can move through it smoothly without overthinking, then congratulations! you’ve learned why visuals alone don’t make a design successful.