Bottlenecks everywhere

One of my favorite books is The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt. It's one of those books I've read more than once, and will probably read again. It's a book about bottlenecks, but it's much more than that.

I was reminded of it when reading this post from Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, which I'm now going to have to read. In his book, Anderson presents the question, "How big would the movie industry be if it had more screens?" That's a fascinating and perceptive observation of constraints in action.

And someone's tried to answer it. Based on the 13,000 independent films created each year, a scientist at Nokia Siemens Networks has calculated that, based on expected demand, those films -- if there were enough screens to play them -- would add 60%-70% to box office sales.

Of course, there are good reasons why there aren't that many movie theaters around. But Anderson goes on to point out that movie theaters aren't the only way to watch a movie...

"Bastards of your brochures"

This post from Jeffrey Zeldman surprised me a bit. I wasn't aware that the folks who make websites often don't work for their organization's web department, or that many organizations don't have web departments.

I shouldn't have been, though. A few months ago a former colleague asked me for advice in finding someone to help her organization with a redesign of their site. Interestingly, she wasn't a 'web person', but the task of managing the project came to be hers. And at the time, her organization didn't have any web department to speak of.

Zeldman points out that most of the folks who are tasked with web design fall under IT departments or Marketing departments, neither of which is well-suited to develop great web sites.

But even when there is a web division, it's not always regarded as a subject matter expert. Instead, it's regarded as the 'IT department for the web', or, in the case of TV stations, it falls under the news department. Reading some of the comments on the post has led me to believe this is the case for many web departments.

This can lead to folks with a tremendous amount of talent marketing, writing, communicating, and designing for print doing all of the same things for the web, while the web folks implement. The result is what dominates the web -- generally well functioning, pedestrian, poorly executed web sites, repetitively bad layouts (compare the number of fixed width corporate sites to fluid or flexible width sites), usability nightmares that we should have woken from years ago, and, to paraphrase Zeldman, bastard children of organizations' brochures.

I look forward to more from the ALA survey where Zeldman got his data. I happily responded to it, because even after a decade and half, web design and development is woefully misunderstood by even the brightest people.

Some Misconceptions

... about web design...

I've been trying to come up with a top ten list for these... but I've only gotten 6 as of now...


It only takes 5 minutes to set up a blog. Why should it take so much longer to set up a website?

Showing you a site that I like should be more than enough information for you to come up with mine.

Graphic designer + coders in India = efficient.

White space is bad.

Users will use the site the way I expect them to.

If you can make my site look good, people will visit it.

Banner vs. Skyscraper vs. ...

A great article about web advertising on Digital Web:

"So why is so much advertising, including web advertising, so skippable? Partly, I think, because advertisers make the mistake of thinking of the audience as viewers rather than targets. The distinction is real: A viewer is one who views, which implies—but does not necessarily actually deliver—their attention. It is a soft and flabby term that describes a mostly passive audience. On the other hand, a target is one to whom an ad is aimed, and suggests aiming, accuracy, and a more active, vigorous stance by the advertiser."

Wow

Ok. I drank the Gool-aid a long time ago. But this is just cool.

You can look at your Google map, zoom in to street level, and then look at 360 degree street-level views of that point on the map. It's like being there.

A Simply Fantastic Book

I picked this book up a few days ago as part of my Father's Day gift and I'm overwhelmingly pleased with it. In the first few pages are a packing list of things every boy should have:

swiss army knife
compass
matches
magnifying glass
... etc.

Then it immediately goes into how to make the best-flying paper airplane ever (the harrier), knots that every boy should know, and the seven wonders of the ancient world. Skip around and you find tales of heroes and wars and famous battles... stuff about bugs, fish, and US Naval Flag Codes... how to make invisible ink and how to create a cypher... the full text of the Declaration of Independence... and even an explanation about how a boat can sail into the wind.

In fact, there's so much valuable stuff here that I'm not sure it should be limited to boys. My son is only 18 months old now, but the book is so good I might just have to introduce my four year old daughter to its contents until her brother is old enough to appreciate the art of hunting, skinning, and cooking a rabbit.

What I appreciate most about this book is that it doesn't try to be sickly-sweet, nor does it overwhelm the reader with political correctness. It's about all of the stuff we did when we were kids -- the stuff that made being a kid fun. And even when that stuff was 'dangerous', it made being a kid all the more worthwhile and fun. The book makes no apologies for telling kids to be kids.

Generally speaking...

Jonathan Kahn has a good article at ALA about some of the nuances of creating web sites. I think he's spot-on in some of his observations.

"Web design is about communication. We need to use technology like servers, browsers, code, and databases to make that communication happen. But in a successful website, the technology is the servant of the communication—not the other way around."

And I'm all too familiar with the misconceptions people have about what's involved in creating websites. Overall, those misconceptions follow these lines...

1. It only takes 5 minutes to set up a blog -- why should it take 5 weeks, 5 months, or more to make a website?


2. If a graphic designer comes up with a nice layout, we can just outsource the programming to the lowest bidder.

(and my favorite)

3. A nice looking design will increase the number of people who visit our site.

More

No. Really. Why?

Apple decided to launch a beta (though some say it's sub-sub-beta) version of Safari for Windows.

I suppose there are reasons. I picked up on Eric Meyer's site that it'll help Windows developers test for the browser that's going to be implemented on the forthcoming iPhone, but that seems like a cruel, cruel joke to play on those of us who already have a mac to test on.

Color Schemer

I came across this last week, and I've found myself using it a couple of times since then. It's great for coming up with palettes quickly -- especially if you're artistically challenged like me.

Overload part 1

I decided critique the homepages of my local TV stations. Since I live in a top 10 market, these TV stations have more viewers than many smaller market stations combined. It would make sense, then, that their websites are some of the best out there in broadcast news.

All of the sites are fixed width, designed for 1024px. I'll go in order of channel number, lowest to highest.

NBC4.com

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