For many years web design was an unnatural paring of graphic design, software design and product design, all of these disciplines assumed that there was an endpoint that was “done”. We’re going to build the site, like we’re going to build a monolith, in some cases monument that would stand for long time and would work just as designed. I really think building a rich invective web site is more like running an ongoing innovation process, where you are basically managing a portfolio of features, some work and are built upon, others wither and die. In the realm of web 2.0 the idea of constant beta is often talked about but in the end it’s not a 2.0 thing, it’s a web design thing.
YouTube has now started a thing called Test Tube which is there Idea Incubator and treat their site as an ongoing innovation project. I wonder if google’s concept of Google Labs is what influenced this.
Game consoles often launch with “bugs”, little annoyances that didn’t come out in testing, in fact the Xbox probably introduced the concept of crashing to the world of consoles. But rarely did consoles do any real harm, the Wii on the other hand is actually turning into a real liability in some cases when players are losing their grip on the Wiimote and even worse the strap is giving up as well, turning it into a plasma killing missile. My question is how did this not come to light through actual user testing? I wonder if it was tested internally and therefor they didn’t experience the overzealous, adrenaline driven, competitive crazyness that can take people over. They probably knew that the Wiimote was sensitive enough not to need overdriven movements, but not the public. This is going to be an interesting PR challenge for them thats for sure, because while they waffle about “looking into it” consumer generated videos and pictures are popping up everywhere. There’s even a site dedicated to it called WiiHaveAProblem.com.
When you really want to give someone a message to remember say it with buildings, go and get the full message from my by clicking here. It’s a wonderful little app that pulls together arial views of buildings that look like letters, just like the thing on flickr that spells things with photos but far more monumental.
Really nice post by Rex of Fimoculous.com on 30 blogs you might not be reading. I’m somewhat bias because my pet t-shirt blog tcritic.com was mentioned but the list of 30 with Rex’s notes are a really interesting bunch. I do read about 4 on the list but many were new to me. I especially enjoyed the History of the Button and Indexed. Indexed is like a love child spawned of a union between Logic + Emotion and GapingVoid. Here’s an example diagram from Indexed:
Should Guacamole actually contain Avocado? Apparently a Kraft food version of Guacamole contains less than 2% Avocado and a consumer has taken up a class action suite against them for deceptive marketing. The ingredients are of course includes modified food starch, hefty amounts of coconut and soybean oils, and green.
Kind of like the difference between a Grape Juice and a Grape Drink…
