Design — Page 2

A quick question:

July 21, 2004 by Michael Boyle

A quick question:

Why do all ad/marketing/pr/web agency sites suck? For both personal and professional reasons I browse such sites on a regular basis, and the ONLY reaction they give me is to completely lose confidence that they have the slightest clue what they are doing.

There are exceptions, generally among very small shops like my friends at Plank, and even more so 37Signals, to single out two of the decent ones. But the big shops – they display nothing but complete ignorance of the web; which, in 2004, is equal to ignorance of the media and marketing world in general.

Thoughts of a redesign.

July 12, 2004 by Michael Boyle

Thoughts of a redesign.

Traditionally, weblogs are redesigned as a surprise. The person who maintains the site generally toils for a short time and then abruptly unveils the new design, hoping for maximum shock value as the new design hopefully impresses and awes readers. I am going to take a different approach: I’m going to ask what people would like to see.

I have been tinkering with a couple of ideas, but haven’t quite settled on anything good yet. One of them was yellow and black and red – sort of a throwback to an old mikel.org design. One of them is almost identical to this one, but a little cleaner. I’ve also been looking at some of the very white-looking low-contrast text-oriented designs.

So I throw the ball to you: what do you think the next mikel.org should look like? Are there any design elements here that you think should be untouchable – maybe the pencil? From a strict usability standpoint, what do you think it is important to fix? The orange I use, for instance – I know it’s a little bright and hard to read on some Win machines. How about the one lowly table in an otherwise all-CSS design? OK, or ditch it? What do you think?

Design by Fire

March 10, 2004 by Michael Boyle

Design by Fire

takes an in-depth look at self-checkout systems in grocery stores. We have such a system at the local Provigo, and the experience is just pathetic from beginning to end. But even before that, I fail to see the payoff. What is my incentive to use the self-checkout? Do I get a discount for doing the work myself? Do I get out of the store more quickly? Is it somehow easier? The answer to all of those things is emphatically no. The problem, though? I highly doubt that the grocery store gives a damn. That’s not even the worst violator of system design in that one location!

Zeldman:

January 26, 2004 by Michael Boyle

Zeldman:

Don’t design on spec.

Netscape’s DevEdge site

October 17, 2002 by Michael Boyle

Netscape’s DevEdge site

fatures a great interview with Douglas Bowman about the Wired News redesign. It turns out that my complaints about the colours the other day probably look silly out of context, cause they change the colours of the site regularly.