Look Vs. Feel

I thought this clickz.com article made an interesting distinction between “look” and “feel.”

Everybody throws around the phrase "look and feel" when referring to the way something operates. That term became famous in the early days of the Mac/Windows rivalry, when there were lawsuits over look and feel. Windows looked and felt too much like the Mac, it was said. Today, that term has been adopted by Web designers to describe a site's visual aspects.

Look and feel are two very different things, and I wish people would stop using that phrase as if they were one thing. Windows did not look and feel like a Mac. It looked like a Mac. It did not feel like one.

What's the difference, and how does it relate to interactive marketing? A site's look can be described by its physical and visual attributes. It has big blue buttons, black type, a clean layout, not too many graphics, and so forth.

A site's feel is how it operates, or its modus operandi. When a site asks you to select the country you're in so it can direct you to the appropriate localized Web site, one site may redirect you immediately when you click on an item from the list. Another may make you select the item and press the "go" button next to the list. Both sites basically look identical, but one site acts differently. Its rules about how it handles list boxes are different from the other site. The feel is different.