tips for designing
i think that my first skill assignments for the class contained all or most of the things that people hate about sites... here are the things most useful things i came up with in order to correct such problems:

1. when designing your color scheme, try to copy the color schemes that you see naturally. An example of this is blue... when it is used in different hues and cooler tones are used, the design of the page is very appeasing to the eye... kinda like the ocean. hahaha.

2. never abuse anything. if you like animated gifs, try to limit them to one or so a page... there is nothing more annoying than being distracted by the same repetitive animation over and over again.

3. Stay away from layouts that invoke peoples opinions. Music falls into this category and is a definite no-no. While you might think that a certain song is supercalifragilisticexpiralidotious, someone with different tastes might see him/herself forced to leave the sight because of the annoying cacophony that is coming out of the speakers... Music also tendos to be very repetitive in websites because the longer the sound file the heavier the page is... thus, even "hey now" gets old after listening to the chorus 30 times in 2 minutes.

4. People need consitency... wacky, varied backgrounds are simply distacting and ussually (the colorful ones mostly) interfere with the readability of the page.

Basically, try to make the design as neutral and as free-flowing as possible