F-bombs…
September 21st, 2011 § Leave a Comment
It’s always good to learn things about yourself. It means you’re growing. As a person. As a professional. As a tree…wait, not as a tree. Trees don’t learn.
Anyway, something I’ve learned about myself recently:
Nothing makes me drop f-bombs like shitty design.
I’m sure there are people who know me who could have told you that about me, but I never realized it was such a trigger until recently. And by recently, I mean about ten minutes ago.
So what sparked my moment of self-realization? A combination of two things, actually.
First, a heuristic analysis I’m hip-deep in at work. It’s bad, folks. Really, really bad–broken interface metaphors, disappearing menus, vague messaging, specialized terminology, inconsistent visual treatments. You name the rule, I can pretty readily point you to a place where this dev team has broken it. (It’s in fact bad enough that it’s almost inspired another rant about Agile…which is something I haven’t done in quite awhile.)
And second, Facebook’s newest design. This sparked such ire in me that I proceeded to rant about it on Facebook. Littering the landscape with f-bombs and other colorful language. Why does my potty mouth stand out in this instance as notable to me? Because I’m friends with my mother, various relatives, and some teachers from as far back as fourth grade on Facebook. As such, that’s generally not a venue where I let the “fuck” flag fly.
So, congratulations Facebook. You’ve released such a shitty design that you made me cuss in front of my mother. I’m hope you’re fucking proud of yourselves. Fucking idiots.
Waste of…
December 10th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
…money…space…time. You name it, this is a waste of it.
My personal winner for Most Ridiculous Product of the Year for 2010 is…
Starbucks VIA Ready Brewer...a brewer for your instant fucking coffee. Brilliantly stupid.
It’s instant fucking coffee, you stupid fucks. Why the hell does anyone need an appliance for that? Seriously. And to have the nerve to call it a “brewer”? That’s only something that the money grubbing whores of Starbucks would try to have the balls to do.
I’d like to think that people aren’t as dumb as marketers assume they are. Maybe for X-mas this year, Santa will restore my faith in my fellow humans and make sure not to put this piece of ri-cock-ulousness under anyone’s tree.
Using video to communicate interaction?
October 22nd, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Late last night, I got a wild hair stuck in my brain. Those of you who have experienced the phenomenon of wild hairs know that they must be tamed before your brain will allow you to move on to anything else.
My wild hair was around using video to communicate interaction, and doing it on the cheap. Meaning: I didn’t want to have to go buy anything to try to make my little experimental dream a reality. So, running through a quick inventory of tools at my disposal, I settled on trying a combination of Visio and iMovie (I know, I’m mixing computing platforms like a crazy person) to see if I could rough something out.
(You’re probably wondering why Visio. Two reasons: 1) I <3 Visio. And 2) most of my work products were created in Visio, so I wouldn’t have to spend time creating something new, I could leverage existing artifacts for my experiment. The point after all was to do something for no cost…and time is money, my friends.)
So, I grabbed some past project work, dumbed down the UI a bit, got rid of the branding elements, and began my first foray into anything resembling motion work since the last time I fired up Macromedia Director in 1999. The result, while rough, is promising enough for me to want to spend some time experimenting and refining enough to throw this into my personal UX toolbox.
You can watch the video below. I’ll warn you up front that it’s a little jumpy, a little too fast in places, and the text can be hard to read. But I’m ok with that for a first effort that I didn’t spend much time fussing over.
