The good and the broken
Last night I gave my digital storytelling talk at BayCHI and had a great time.
I shared the bill with Mark Hurst of Creative Good and Good Experience, and enjoyed hearing his spiel about the importance of thinking strategically about design and user experience -- stepping back from the details of button placement and link colors and so forth and asking basic questions about what your goals are, what your relationship with the user is, and whether your design helps or hurts. The message was very pertinent to the issues we wrestle with every day here at Salon, as we try to keep our "buy a subscription or get a free day pass" model clear and easy to understand.
Mark runs a mailing list, a conference, and -- most recently -- has started a Web site called thisisbroken.com, for which he's asking people to send in photos of things they think are broken. It's interesting, sometimes funny stuff.
I'm tempted to send in a picture of the White House, but I think he's hoping to keep it a forum for thinking about design, not making satirical points about politics...
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