Mark Hurst of Creative Good did the same thing when I interviewed him. While usability is important, it isn't everything. Not by a long shot. If it is familiar, well, you can remember. It is the novel cases that are of particular interest.
Information exists both in the head and in the world.
If it isn't in the head, the information better be in the world. Part of this can be handled through convention. We navigate websites because there is a convention that links are underlined and in color. This is a pretty crappy convention because it is ugly, unaesthetic. All those underlines and colors ruin the page layout.