Category: Design

What the fuck?

Sometimes things like this just have to remind you of how fucking weird the internet really is.

*Update: Oh my god, even stranger, I just noticed that the design/html is a direct rip off of the sub category pages at the Apple Support website. ( I cant seem to find the direct link because my cookies send me to the apple care support pages… I cant seem to see the “consumer” support pages)

This is what Tool’s website should look like. Like to a ‘t.’ Via Linkdup

Gah. I’m getting so frustrated with life in the ‘real’ business world. It’s no wonder that corporate America takes forever to get anything done.. Here I am, a designer, working on a project with a company that was/is a client. I did their website (they’re web consultants), and now I’m on their ‘team’ for one of their projects. Basically what they’ve told me: “Attend meetings with our clients, some of which will be 5 hours or longer… Take notes on stuff that will help develop a brand and website/application… Okay, so now that you’ve taken all these notes and gone through all your discovery excercises… do NOTHING… Write a ‘creative brief’ but don’t design any logos or any sites yet… We’ve got another company to do the logo, despite the fact that a) you’re better and b) the amount of time we’ve allotted in the budget for you is nowhere near the amount it would take to write 1 document… So you’ve got 45 hours left in the next 3 weeks, but just don’t do anything ‘creative’ with that time, even though you’re our ‘creative’ team member.” GAGH. And the real end-client WANTS me to work on the logo. THEY want me to, but this jerk who thinks he’s a project manager is telling me not to, because the company that did their shitty logo is doing the logo for the client… so my time has been budgeted, but not for logo work, so therefore, I cannot do work on the logo even though I know that the people actually doing it won’t do anything that the client will like. SO frustrating. All of a sudden, working at a cool Lower-Downtown office with rad people seems like something I was CRAZY to leave. -Sigh-

From the sunshiney-as-ever Jakob Nielson (via Camworld):

Forcing users to browse PDF documents can reduce your website’s usability by about 300% relative to HTML pages. This is my rough estimate, based on watching users perform similar tasks on a variety of sites that used either PDF or regular Web pages. Because I have not performed a detailed measurement study of PDF on its own, I can’t calculate the precise usability degradation. However, whether the true number is 280% or 320%, one thing is certain: the number is big and reflects significant user suffering in terms of increased task time and decreased success rates.

ARRRGHH. Like ‘usability’ can be measured in fucking percentage points, fucker. I again cannot accurately express how much I hate this jerkoff. Who the fuck even uses PDF for in-website, on-screen viewing anyway? No fucking body. Argh. Jerk. Yet another example of him making shit up in order to further his $20,000/day usability-seminar rates. And as an after-thought:

PDF pages lack navigation bars and other apparatus that might help users move within the information space. Because PDF documents can be very big, the inability to easily navigate them takes a toll on users. PDF documents also typically lack hypertext, again because they are designed with print in mind.

Okay, so that Propellerheads Reason 1.0 documentation I was reading this weekend with the navigation on the left-hand side must not have really either a) existed, or b) been a PDF. I thought I was reading it in Acrobat 4, but I must not have been, because I’m a fucking idiot, just like all the people on the web, according to Jakob. I think it’s time to rekindle this anti-Jakob fire that’s been dwindling in embers lately. If there was a way to embed Flash inside a PDF, I’d do it, just to make him mad. With music, rollover-sounds, and the most unintuitive navigation ever.

This site pisses me off on so many levels. The design sucks, the name is offensive, the subject matter is ridiculous and even the way he is serving it is fuckin’ horrible.

I’m probably feeding into the exact reaction this guy is looking for. Ugh.

I hate to utilize a forum like this for my own ends, but here goes. I am finding myself in need of a design position. If you need me or know someone that does, please contact me. Being laid off with a wife, a three-year old and another on the way in less than 4 weeks is not the best feeling in the world, let me tell you.

The problem with the Jakob Nielsen approach is that a site designed solely from the perspective of usability is useless from the perspective of emotion. And emotion is where long-term customer relationships start, which is what you were after when you made that huge investment in your web presence, isn’t it?

Amen.

So.. those of you who slipped in and have taken a look at Deeperhue in the past week or so have found that the new design was up… Aw, but it’s down now. Why? Because I did something so radical, so insane, that it just has to wait til the May 1 Reboot for you to see it.

*Note: It’s actually not that big a deal, and this is in fact just a way to generate hype around my new sub-par portfolio site.