Ugly? Sold!

'The nightmare for product managers is working for months on a new product launch only to see their brainchild fail because the market says, "Ew, are you kidding me? That's ugly!" I think this is the reason why so many things we buy are just 'nice': They are perfectly fine products that focus on their functional appeal while borrowing their aesthetic from some other successful thing on the market...

The real trick is to resist navigating consumer taste and understand the emotional sources for taste so that you can to them instead...

So ultimately, don't all these things sell by tapping into a person's sense of what is meaningful? I would suggest that they do. That's why some ugly stuff sells, and some beautiful stuff sells more.'

- John Edson, 'Why Ugly Sells'.