When should design trump usability? Can a pretty site be a little less usable if it’s extra beautiful? Or is that always a no-no?

In traditional desktop applications, it’s a common rule of thumb to not hide functionality behind things such as right-click menus, but to expose them more generally through a top level menu or toolbar. Sometimes in web design, web sites themselves can have a learning curve. It may not be immediately apparent how a site works or what to click on. Its learnability may be a little lower in order to accommodate a slicker design. The web site simply becomes less intuitive. Hyperlinked images start looking like regular images and text hyperlinks start looking like regular text until the mouse rolls over it. That’s negative points in the world of user experience.

The actual level of usability needs to be considered too. Preferably your web site is not just usable, but competitively usable. Users should prefer to use your website rather than someone else’s. Since the iPhone has been out a while now, some people have come to realize that on-screen keyboards aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Even though it is beautiful to behold…

you just can’t beat the tactile response of a hardware keyboard…

So when do you go with usability rather than a beautiful design? Or is beauty sometimes enough to compensate for a less than stellar user experience?