Web Design Disaster

Sunday, September 7, 2008 Posted by Tetsu at 3:59 PM 1 comments  

If there are award-winning web design endeavors, there is also a list of miserable failures. Actually, there's probably more information on the world's worst web design than the world's best ones. We can't exactly blame these web designers though. Creating designs in an extremely volatile channel like the internet is no easy feat. The genius you came up with today may be outdated tomorrow. If you think you did something cool today, there's a chance that someone will be introducing a new concept everyone would be jumping on and you'd be left with a design that nobody would buy.

So right now, as we speak, what makes a Web Design Disaster?

Let's take for example havenworks. Who hasn't mentioned havenworks when talking about web design disasters? Anyway what makes havenworks a disaster? At first glance you'd understand why it is such. I also find it funny that because of all the bad rep havenworks is getting, it has now risen to Google PR 5.



Havenworks website


The basics of the basics: Readability.

Visitors should be able to read what you have put up in there. If they click your link and could not understand half of what you're saying, they won't waste their time trying to decode you. Apart from the incredibly small column with squeezed in text, the blue links surrounding the content hurts the eyes and stunts the comprehension.

If you fail in Readability, you must be extremely lucky to get visitors to come back. Or you must have something really important and relevant to their interests.

I came across some basic guidelines on web design that may prove useful to some of you.

1. Thou shalt not abuse Flash.

Adobe's (ADBE) popular Web animation technology powers everything from the much-vaunted Nike (NKE) Plus Web site for running diehards to many humdrum banner advertisements. But the technology can easily be abused—excessive, extemporaneous animations confuse usability and bog down users' Web browsers.

2. Thou shalt not hide content.

Advertisements may be necessary for a site's continued existence, but usability researchers say pop-ups and full-page ads that obscure content hurt functionality—and test a reader's willingness to revisit. Elective banners—that expand or play audio when a user clicks on them—are much less intrusive.

3. Thou shalt not clutter.

The Web may be the greatest archive of all time, but sites that lack a coherent structure make it impossible to wade through information. Amazon.com (AMZN) and others put their sites' information hierarchy at the top of their list of design priorities.

... Read the rest here: Business Week

Strange Bicycle Models

Tuesday, July 29, 2008 Posted by Tetsu at 4:10 PM 2 comments  

This is awesome. I stumbled upon something on the net (yes... I'm starting to become addicted to that Stumble! button) and my preference settings in SU are set to humor/odd/bizarre so you can just imagine the kind of things I get to stumble upon. Just now I was going through it and found some interesting bicycle models.


Well it IS rubber after all

The picture above is just one of my favorites. If you look at it, it makes perfect sense really. The bicycle itself sends a funny but logical message. Being a bicycle, it can take you to places faster than walking so the shoes kind of symbolize the fact that if you use a bicycle, you'd practically be using several pairs of feet. See how I can put art into everything? Awesome right? LOL.

There are more examples of strange bicycle models in the website I stumbled.




More at this website: http://thehomebased.com/?p=89

iPhone 3G: battery life

Sunday, July 20, 2008 Posted by Tetsu at 11:32 PM 0 comments  

Much has been said even before the iPhone 3G came out and now that it's ready for consumption, people have been doing a lot of test-drives that pushes the phone's limit. Just to make sure it's worth your money. Apple said that the iPhone 3G can last five hours for talk time and people have been groaning about it. Is it really that bad? Now since I'm not exactly a big Apple fan (not a Microsoft baby either) I would still want to know how long I can use it. If it's going to be an all-purpose phone and with 3G, I would want something that can last me especially with the price it's asking me to pay.

So I came across this post on comparing iPhone 3G's battery life.

source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-9992887-1.html

3G talk time (in hours) of GSM phones
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

when you look at it like that... it doesn't seem so bad now, does it?

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