Blink your Blog Design

[From Wired](http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70037-0.html?tw=rss.index), a new [study shows](http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tandf/tbit/2006/00000025/00000002/art00003) that in “less than half the time it takes to blink — people make aesthetic judgments that influence the rest of their experience with an internet site.” The report comes just as we’re finishing up a book chapter on designing a blog, choosing a layout, features, and color. Much of design is “I know it when I see it.” You can apply techniques like [Eyetracker](http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=64), [heat maps](http://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html), and consider the vast amounts of research on usability that companies like Amazon.com do, but here (as I’d suspect) it comes down to that critical first impression — that [blink Gladwell writes about](http://www.gladwell.com/blink/).

The study doesn’t show what makes a difference, what users like or don’t, but concludes that, “designers have to make sure they’re not offending users visually” and to not give them a negative impression.

The study didn’t cover it, but my guess is that RSS doesn’t give a great first impression, especially those RSS icons I call the little badges of courage.