I know exactly how you feel. A few more thoughts. I wish I knew how much "design" was the threshold for users to accept the site as "professional", basically

I know exactly how you feel. A few more thoughts. I wish I knew how much "design" was the threshold for users to accept the site as "professional", basically what I could get away with. I think I get tripped up because I don't like those 2.0 designs. I call it "frosting" or "cheese". And I prefer the less frosted sites like HN and craigslist, or even google. I get especially annoyed when my frequent sites get redesigned to look more 2.0. The worst was slashdot. They threw everthing in there, gradient, bars, rounded corners. To me that looks much worse than before, but I wonder how many people find it better. The word needs a study or focus group on how frosted a site needs to get to be appreciated by its users.