NASA Launch is GO

NASA... the source of dreams and exploration for years. The one government organization that spends its money to better mankind and explore something bigger then ourselves. The one organization that has given us such things as composite materials and "space-age" technologies. The one organization that should always be taking a leap forward has taken one small step backwards, and one giant leap backwards for website design and technology.

I was never really all that impressed with the NASA website of the past:



I found it somewhat difficult to navigate and they really did a great job of making you explore the search for the information your looking for. Great if you have a lot of time to kill and your interested in spending more time searching for what your looking for then reading about that thing. But now...



So... who is the target audience for this website? What possessed the people behind the design of this site to have meetings and decide that this would be a good idea? I do give them a hand up however for focusing on standards and accessibility more with the new site then the old but seriously now? I don't dream of greater things and new technologies looking at this website. Instead I envision a tired old has been trying to be hip and cool. It's one thing to try and be like others, but when your in the space industry and the entire world looks at you as a leader of space exploration and pioneering I suggest you spend a little more time with information management. I also suggest you ditch the local science museum exhibit look and color scheme and focus more on minimalism. After all if your traveling into space the last thing you want is unnecessary cargo that could endanger the mission.

Now that my personal rant on how terrible the re-design of www.nasa.gov is, I hope to hear from some of you how you feel about it. I will sum up my feelings with a qoute from the world of tomorrow.

"Space, it seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you."

Weather for Sale

Driving into work on Thursday morning I heard an interesting story on NPR. Ok so they have lots of interesting stories but this one struck me because just that morning I had been thinking about the topic for the past couple of days. Here is what the story was:

Marketplace' Report: Weather Channel Sale
Day to Day, January 3, 2008 ·
The company that owns the Weather Channel might put the network up for sale along with nine daily newspapers. The channel is expected to sell for close to $5 billion dollars. Madeleine Brand gets the forecast on the sale of the Weather Channel from Marketplace's Sam Eaton.

Why is this interesting? Well if your like me I check the weather often and I use www.weather.com to do so. This is what your presented with as your first screen.


I have always had problems with using this website. I still manage to get the weather but it is so much work. Aside from the terrible overuse of advertising, the site is poorly designed and the layout, if you can call it that, screams "Please dont use me!". I can only imagine the usability nightmares that reside behind this mess and what a screen reader does when you visit this site. My biggest complaint of all are the rollover menus, they are like taking the Double Dare Physical Challenge.

Trying to find the correct information your looking for on the site is near to impossible also. Having to scroll through more advertisements then weather related information is again a real problem. I'm sorry but I don't see how someone who is trying to see if it is going to rain or not will be interested in refinancing their mortgage or choosing a dancing shadow to show how much they like credit cards.

So with one of the last privately owned cable channels, The Weather Channel, going up for sale, and with potential buyers such as Comcast and Time Warner, what is in store for the new weather.com... if there will even be one. I think all we have to look forward to is full page, intrusive, click to close ads and a quest to find out about the weather. It seems even the weather has sold out now at days. Long live the outdoor thermometer in your back yard!

logo idea from a long time ago

I almost had a complete thought. I had a sneak preview of BY626's cursor and star logo and I was trying to capture the idea of magic and science all in one image. I'm trying to say potions and chemistry.

I have an addiction to drop shadows

So I was really bored after everyone left today at work so I decided to work on a new Blog design. You can see from the screenshot above what it looks like and you can download the Photoshop File Here. As you can see from the design a took a lot of color and visual cues from the current IxDA website. I was attempting to achieve a good balance of our own style with that of the existing IxDA. This way people would associate PhIxDA with IxDA. I still need to layout what a single post would look like with comments as well as what the comment entry page would look like. I have a goal for the weekend though.

Let me know what you all think of it and please feel free to add to the Photoshop file and destroy what you like in it.

P.S. I am hooked on drop shadows and have been for a long time. I need to cure myself of this illness but I have yet to find another way to create depth in my designs. I do feel however that when used correctly drop shadows are a very useful and important element to design.

meeting notes 20071016

My Goodness my Guinness!

Focus - we talk about this a lot. We are getting together to talk about interaction design, not just interaction design for web. Currently the web is our common ground. While we don't want our group to grow out of control, we are interested in becoming more diverse. In these early meeting it is very important to clearly establish some goals for the group.

Exercises

• Something to consider: Home Depot kitchen triangle for cooking design
  
• Blog Studies:
• What is a blog
• a place to review products and services
• a scrapbook of ideas
• What is a good structure for Blogs
• pages?
• sort by date
• tags
• What is a blog really
  
• information stored in a database that is queried and displayed
  
• Phixda logo:
• automagically
• What are the rules:
• and how can we break them

Discussion: what is interaction design and how does it compare to other design disciplines? We went around the table and asked everyone this question. Bryan quoted boxes and arrows

In the end, interaction design is the choreography and orchestration of these form-based design disciplines to create that holistic narrative between human(s) and the products and systems around us.

we agreed that ixd is more than instructional design. we agreed that it is more than visual design. We considered how ixd has something to do with being able to change something in a predetermined and non-destructive way. We never really settled on a definition, but we did make several insightful observations: paintings have conversations with viewers, led zeppelin 3 has a wheel that spins, interaction design has something to do with feedback, and as we get deeper into the conversation we realize we sound more and more like "The Matrix"

The Junto Experience

I attended the Junto meeting at P'UNK Avenue last night. It was a very sobering experience. The organization of the group is very solid and they have a very specific goal when they meet. Let me first say that if you haven't already you should really sign up on the mailing list for Junto. It is the only way to get the information about the next Junto which will focus on design. Go Here to sign up... now!

With that said, here is how the meeting went:

I arrived there at 6pm when it was supposed to start and there were only a handful of people. I sat down with a few people, introduced myself and got a little background as to who they were and what they did. It seems that the people there have been doing it for a while now and they all knew each other so I felt a little bit as the odd man out. The people were a good mix. There were some interior designers, graphic designers, web developers, architects and instructional designers. It was a great mix that really tugged at each others thoughts and generated some very stimulating conversation. We all mingled till about 7:15 when Geoff stepped up and got everyones attention and the discussion started.



He went over the article and pulled points from it. There was a small exchange of questions from the group towards Geoff but that was only pertaining to our tasks. What they had planned was for there 2 be two groups, one that was for an open, new age work space and the other was a strict, regimented work space. We had 15 minutes to discuss our points amongst the group and establish a basis for our argument. We then were each given 4 minutes to state our point and argument for the type of work space we were assigned. Once the argument was made by both teams, a 2 minute rebuttal took place. These rebuttals brought in the rest of the group as we all chimed in with our personal views.

After that a brief review of the night and some propaganda about Junto took place then it went back to the mingle and discuss atmosphere. I stayed until about 9:15 and there were still a good amount of people there talking and drinking and doing what I expected people like them to do, be creative amongst a group.

Over all I left with a brighter view and outlook on what exactly it is I am doing in my profession. It was very refreshing to sit and listen to others and have them listen to me as well. The fact that these people are so accepting of outside opinions is amazing. They don't argue amongst themselves and try to one up each other. Rather they engage in meaningful and purposeful debate. All in all I was a lot happier after I left the meeting then when I arrived. It was a nice break from the monotony that has taken hold in my life and I really look forward to the next meeting. Hope you all can make it next time.

impressions: lm3labs web site

Lee sent out an email with this link - http://www.lm3labs.com/ on October 1st.

I really like their products and they have an interesting interface for their website. I wish the website was more helpful. I have some thoughts.

It is all flash and it is nicely done. You should all know by now how I feel about flash, but just in case you don't - flash is super cool and I love it, but I don't think it is a good idea to build a site entirely in flash. You would think that a company that is making some really cool and pioneering interfaces would have spent a little more time trying to understand the Internet.

There is a lot of visual noise and it would have been nice to have been able to turn off the styles and just see the links and the information - thanks flash. one of my favorite things about the site was the drop down that didn't drop down.

it is just there. I click on the top link and that sub-nav is just there. It only goes away when I navigate away. It is annoying that I have to constantly see a loading bar while navigating the site. At least I don't have to worry about my hand being too shaky to keep it hovered over the drop down.

After several minuets of clicking around I still had no idea what lm3labs did. I clicked on all the links and I saw pretty pictures and some white text. I didn't read any of it. I don't usually take the time to read when looking at a web site. I just scan for pictures and headings. I clicked on all the links on the top horizontal navigation bar but I still had no idea why Lee had sent the link. I was about to close the site and just happened to look in the lower left (one of the worst places to put links to important information) and noticed two additional links - the showreel link launched a video that finally showed me what I wanted to know. The video is very cool, but there was no volume control. I don't think there is narration. I turned it off cause I didn't want to listen to their midi loop.

After watching part of the video, I was interested in learning more. Clicking the news brings up an box - looks like they are still working on their news feed.

In the end I was fascinated and frustrated.