Two of the listed websites refer to a design blog and site of the day website. As a designer, the problem I've always had with those categories is a lack of dat

Two of the listed websites refer to a design blog and site of the day website. As a designer, the problem I've always had with those categories is a lack of data backing up claims of good design and usability. It still feels like industry writeups are based on anecdata, personal experience presented as fact. Yes, there are some mostly accepted guidelines, such as don't choose a font that's highly distracting, don't go overboard with colors, make things that are important easily accessible to the user... though even those can be broken in certain cases. But when we extrapolate good practices simply based on what other companies do, we can be susceptible to make assumptions that are true... until they are not. For example, hiding navigation in the hidden left menu (via the hamburger icon) is completely fine because its practiced by most Android apps and Facebook/Spotify... until Facebook/Spotify redesigns their iOS apps to navigate main sections from the bottom, and Google releases their 2016 Material Design style guide that explicitly provides specs for a bottom navigation. Then, for websites that get showcased by dint of high ratings from design judges, it seems like it's largely based on what's visually stunning, leaning heavily towards one-off marketing sites than considering whether or not it was ultimately successful in terms of impacting the users. I've certainly seen my fair share of things that seemed to look and feel good, only to perform quite badly in a real world environment. That's not to say that inspiration and aesthetics have no merit, but instead that design is a complex discipline that includes many considerations of the experience from a user, and that only focusing on the visual reinforces the unfortunate stereotype that designers only care about what looks pretty.