If everything in the world is explicit, there's not a whole lot of room for creativity.

Clement Mok, 'Interface in Your Face: Clement Mok takes on the Web' interviewed by Scott Rosenberg

Life would be so much easier if there were simple formulae which could be applied to every conundrum, if every problem could be solved by religiously following expert advice. We must want it or there wouldn't be so many experts available to give us advice about the proper conduct of every facet of our existence. The newer or more novel the problem the more we long for someone else to supply a simple answer. There is never a dearth of volunteers willing to fill the vacuum with their own patented solution.

The world is full of Information Architects and they have gone out of their way to ensure that we can have the full benefit of their experience. Numerous conferences, books, websites, articles and courses now exist so that we can all learn to apply IA to our information presentation conundrums. These experts have scrutinised actual human beings using web sites and made them answer questions or describe their moment-to-moment reactions. They have talked to information presentation experts from other disciplines. They've read each others' books. They've written their own and shamelessly flogged them at every opportunity. Some of them have even worked on web sites. Any IA expert can whip up, at a moments notice, lists entitled things like: '12 good web design deeds,' 'Dos and Don'ts of Navigation design,' '7 Top tips and tricks to make your site user-friendly.'

All of this frantic activity might give you the impression that we are witnessing the birth of a new science. DON'T BE FOOLED! What we're looking at is the results of scavenging knowledge gained from experts in other information media (librarians, museum curators, natural history scientists, psychologists, high-school teachers, screenwriters and instructional designers, etc etc), and interlarding it with commonsense observations. What they have to tell us CAN be useful -- but it isn't rocket science. Pick and choose amongst their pronouncements for what works for you and your specific design problems. Don't allow the seeming utility of their solutions stop you from developing better ones of your own.

Personally, the best bit of advice I've found (and I have no idea where), is that good usable systems are invisible -- the easier they are to use the less the user is aware of them. This shouldn't have to mean that they are undesigned (also known as being 'as ugly as a hatful of dogs' bums' -- see Neilsen's own site, ABC news, Microsoft or almost any large corporate site...), or use banal interface clichés (as above).

What it should mean is that the interface doesn't overshadow the content.

PS; you aint ever going to please all of the people all of the time. The Stanford Web Credibility Project -- yes there really is one -- says:

We find that people quickly evaluate a site by visual design alone.

So there you go folks -- if it ain't pretty it's broken...and all the consistent navigation bars and multiple logical ways to find stuff isn't going to make people like it.