[alphakappa]

You make some interesting points about design. It's always bothered me that in a country with so much talent (both programming and design - you just have to see all the beautiful artwork in good adverts and movie sets to know that there are people who care about aesthetics) pretty much every mainstream website has terrible design. It doesn't matter how well things are programmed if everything looks cheap on the front-end. I liken it to the Chinese products I see in trade shows - they may have the same technology as the American-designed products, but they have such shoddy design and poorly proof-read verbiage that it gives off an impression of low quality. I see Indian website products in the same phase of development - the technology is excellent, but the wrapping is poor.