Plecebo

Friday, June 27, 2008

I do suck!

You suck at photoshop!

http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/06/27/you-suck-at-photoshop-11/

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Style Switchers

These are nifty, definitely to be included in a future project!

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/06/25/style-switchers-contest-results/

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

The new form of usability?

I was looking at the style switcher contest over at Smashing Magazine when I had a revelation... What if you used this idea as a way to usability test your product? Here is the concept:

create a highly customizable version of your site
break your site into discrete elements and make each element editable
let users of your product make changes to each element
record the changes that each user makes
aggregate your observations to find which layouts people preffer
make those layouts the "default" choices with the option to change to the OTHER most popular

I'm thinking in terms of websites such as amazon.com. Allow the visitors to customize what they are seeing on the page and where that is placed. Especially with a large site you will see in a matter of hours (maybe days) what configurations are the most popular and can start to make changes to your default to better suit the needs of your users. Is it just me or does this seem obvious? Anyone know people who are doing this?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Astronaut? Musician? Politician? Rich? Famous? In love? Another nifty webapp that lets you see the aspirations of other visitors to the site in real time! Not particularly innovative, but a fun idea.

I want to be me!

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Why rail makes sense over BRT

Seattle Transit Blog has up an article laying out why rail makes the most sense for our major transit corridors over BRT technology. Check out the article here: Why BRT Doesn't Make Sense It is a good article and it lays out well the issues surrounding the debate between Light Rail and BRT buses in Seattle.