Looking at nytimes.com today and realized that it is probably the best designed website - design including layout, user-friendliness, information design (menu location, number of available options of functions, ability to communicate intent of links in a consise way) and aesthetics.

Polygon.com, Mashable.com, Theverge.com are great looking sites, and they have some interesting design as far as the aesthetics of their sites influencing the user experience.

Nytimes.com is clean and crisp visually. It presents alot of information in a number varying subjects of information. (headlines, general news stories, links to videos) And probably most importantly, it also reflects the visual language the Times newspaper and magazine have had for however long.

Look at this page:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/26/us/washington-mudslide-search-continues.html?rref=homepage&module=Ribbon&version=origin®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Home%20Page&pgtype=article

Look in the upper left hand corner. You'll notice an animation of the Times logo that appears as the page is loading. You'll also notice that aside from the headline and the top menu, the text of the page loads at once. Contrast that to most sites where the page loads in chunks and makes for a more frustrating experience if you want to scan down the page and there is a blank section.

The 'Section' menu juts out from the page on the left. It is a nice aesthetic touch, but also is functional as it is a landmark that a user can remember if they choose to navigate to another section of the site.

It's all about the little things...

Do you have sites that you visit simply because the design and user-experience is that impressive?