Archive for the 'work' Category

Designers: FPO PLZKTHX

Published at April 25, 2008 in games, duh, work, funny and user experience. 0 Comments

There has been a design related tempest in a pisspot on gaming websites recently, making fun of (and in some idiotic cases being outraged by) Capcom’s Okami Wii Cover artwork oopsie. This post by GayGamer sums it up:

Wow, I can’t believe I didn’t notice this when it happened. Recently, it was “discovered” that the Okami Wii cover art contains an… abnormality. Amaterasu is barking a translucent IGN watermark. Yep, that’s right, they stole their own artwork off IGN’s web page. I guess the cover art staff could not be bothered to actually use press packs from the original release of the game. (Read More)

As a designer, I am vicariously amused and mortified for Capcom’s agency or design staff. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been rushed to deadline and just grabbed a photo off the web as a placeholder– always with the intention of replacing it with licensed, royalty free, or otherwise appropriate and usable images in before the thing goes out the door to a client. In my case, it usually doesn’t matter much since the contexts are design specs, and either not a final product, or final but web-ui based so any photographic stuff or text will almost always be populated on the fly.

But, you never know what will happen to a document once it’s electronic and not solely in your control. Our team recently put together a tasty little deck that was only intended to help communicate what we were working on one-on-one, with other folks internally. So tasty, in fact, that it was passed up the chain until it became The Presentation used at a Very Public Event. There was a fun, last minute scramble to scrub our once-internal deck of unlicensed art and inside jokes.

In conclusion: Always throw FPO on everything, as a not so subtle reminder to yourself that your work isn’t finished. Make sure you have an alert editor on hand to double check everything before you ship it out the door. And finally, to everyone else: Lighten the hell up.

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yay — I can finally talk about what I’m working on

Published at April 25, 2008 in yahoo!, internets, geek, nifty, work and user experience. 0 Comments

After over 4 months of mum, I can finally talk about what I’m working on: the Yahoo! OS (open strategy). To be even more specific, managing the design team for the end-user experience of the Yahoo! Application Platform (and more than a little hands-on interaction design, given the scope and speed at which we’re working!)

I’m a bit brain fried right now after spending 2 weeks in a cave with our amazing design team* to produce the presentation shown by Ari Balogh (Yahoo!’s new CTO) at today’s Web 2.0 keynote, so I’ll just link over to Cody Simms’ short and sweet post about the project.

*Particular shout outs to Hans Kim, Mary Choi, Nicole Gregory, Jonas Hinn, and our fearless and truly visionary leader Micah Laaker. (and wade. and chris. and ash. and Denis Roy, our PR guy. And tons of other folks.) I couldn’t be prouder to be at Yahoo! working with such talented people.

Updates:
Jono is excited by the prospect of not answering the question “So, what ya workin’ on?” with the answer “I’d tell you but I’d have to kill you.”

Max is similarly excited, and found the keynote video:

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Sturm und drang* und effing** fun

Published at March 21, 2008 in interesting, internets, yahoo! and work. 3 Comments

I just realized I haven’t written anything in about two weeks, and next to nothing since the beginning of the year when I started working on a new project.

Despite all the crazy goings on at work: layoffs, media rumors, stock rollercoasters…

I. Am. Having. A. Blast. Working on something so cool it will make your head pop off. It’s made mine pop off a couple of times already. It’s magnitudes larger and more consumer-y than anything I’ve worked on before, so knowing that 10 jillion people will see and use it gives me a frisson* every time I see a new mockup.

The new situation/project/team are helping me set a couple of interesting new bars: The larger team of folks I work with are as bright and fun and wow as my Netscape days—a personal benchmark not seen since 1998. I’ve been at this company longer than any other I’ve worked at. And most importantly, I’m managing my own team of designers who are doing amazing work.

Anyway, that’s where I am: Head’s down in Sunnyvale, working on The Next Biggest Coolest Secret Thing at The Friendly Internets Company, thus no time to filter the internet and blast snarky posts about everyone and everything. About the closest I come to it is the occasional post to facebook: Pushing the “Share” button in my BrandX RSS Reader is much easier than hawking up bile and making bitter lemonade. Just pretend I said something witty next to every one of those.

I’m going back into the batcave to play with awesome toys now.

Vocabulary shout-outs
* Thanks Tim Gunn
** Thanks Aynne

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I’m not nice, and engineers still can’t dress

Published at February 14, 2008 in geek, work, rant and funny. 1 Comment

So I’m at lunch with some friend’s, and our cafeteria is pretty packed. We end up sharing a long table with some folks who I’M SURE ARE VERY NICE AND SMARTER THAN ME, but who don’t have awesome fashion sense. Like a 10 year old, I start passing notes in class (via SMS) to a friend sitting across the table from me…

200802141912

Then I get an e-mail with a picture attached to it. She wasn’t kidding:
200802141915

No I’m not very nice. But that shit was wrong and funny.

Keywords: Tevas, Uggs, fugly, “comfortable” (as a four letter word), feet

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PlanetOut Looking For Highest Bidder / Queerty (my response)

Published at January 15, 2008 in death of old media, sad, anti-logic, internets, work and queer. 1 Comment

PlanetOut’s still struggling! Despite selling RSVP Vacations and splitting its stocks, the gay publishing company - which brings us Out and The Advocate [and gay.com, hello], among others - simply can’t find the cash to stay afloat.

In an effort to keep from going under completely, the company’s reportedly looking for a sugar daddy: · (Read More)

I still own all my PlanetOut stock - I think it was about 500 shares or so that I bought when I left the company—now about 50 after their recent 10-1 reverse split. I’ve kept it because it’s the only time I received an actual stock certificate, and having one with a tricker of LGBT is a cool piece of queer interweb history.

One of the comments on the linked post said “OUT once spoke to all gay men, it now speaks to a small percentage who buy Gucci and other fashion brands that have nothing to do with an average or successful gay consumer.”

I beg to differ that Out ever spoke for all gay men. For a period of time time, those magazines had the benefit of being novel and unique against a landscape of other lifestyle mags, but that time has passed. The changing landscape of queer politics and lifestyle have fractured and commodotized into a thousand different groups. Just like there is no monolithic “black vote” supporting Obama, queers are more diverse than a single, static, unpersonalized sheaf of pages can speak to.

With the web, they have the ability to behaviorally target the specific and varied interests of the reader, providing advertising and content that is relevant to different demographics, rather than just Guccigays. Sadly, PNO (and by extension out and the advocate) did not invest in their technology infrastructure to flex into this new mode of content delivery. They rested on the laurels of the gay.com domain, assuming that would bring in the eyeballs, while their competition became nimble and microtargeted their audiences… and as such, PNO continues its tailspin.

I want to see them survive - partly because of the staggering number of once prestigious brands that could go down with it, partly for the cool people who still work there, and partly because I can see a cool future for them, but they’ll need a massive infusion of strategy and cash in order to do so.

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AOL Pulls Plug on Netscape Web Browser - Technology on The Huffington Post

Published at December 28, 2007 in sad, internets and work. 0 Comments

Netscape Navigator, the world’s first commercial Web browser and the launch pad of the Internet boom, will be pulled off life support Feb. 1 after a 13-year run. (Read More)

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Nabaztag rage

Published at December 27, 2007 in irritating, sad, geek, work and funny. 0 Comments

Not really… perhaps just bunny irritation.

nabaztagI bought a nabaztag. It’s cute and cuddly (ok its shiny and plastic, but cuddly all the same). I took it to work and have him speak the time every hour, and do occasional random things. Stupid, expensive, and utterly delightful.

I took him home for a few weeks to see if I could do some hacky damage, but then lost interest when I discovered I needed a newer version of PHP (over. my. head.) After those few weeks, several folks in my group started asking “Where’s the bunny? We miss him!” … so I brought him back, and he has been spouting the time ever since.

miltonWell, it finally happened. Someone decided my bunny is not nearly as cute as we think it is. A fellow that sits in the aisle next to ours sent me a very polite note asking me to shut the distracting device off. It really was as nice as could be, but still. It’s a bunny. That talks. And wiggles his ears. And is hackable!

I responded saying we would be sad, but ok with turning him down–not muting or shutting him down. It’s cruel and unusual punishment to silence his golden warble.To be fair, the bunny is a bit shrill, and can stand to be hushed, which I absolutely will. Hopefully I have not made an enemy for life. I feel like Milton mumbling under my breath about staplers, reasonable volume, and setting things on fire.

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The Plague…

Published at December 12, 2007 in friends, irritating and work. 2 Comments

… is going around my office.

We used to sit in two double-sided “rows” of cubicles (i.e. two aisles each with cubes on either side). Then we decided to join the “open plan” bandwagon and tear down most of our walls. We couldn’t get rid of the central wall since it hold’s the power and ethertubes, so we ended up with two open “pits.”

One of the folks in my pit went to Brazil for thanksgiving, and returned with some horrible carnivale coldflu thing. Now I’m not BLAMING him ;) … but ever since then ppl have been dropping like flies. Weirdly it seems to have jumped to the other pit and taken almost all of them out. Twice. So far our side has been untouched. Yesterday, however, someone on our side came down sick… hard and fast. Mildly icky during the day, then massive aches and fever by night.

She’s a newbie to the company, so “Welcome to interweb daycare, where we really just hang out between giving each other colds” and also boooo I hope it will pass soon and boooo I hope it will bypass everyone else and let us get through the crazy days before we go on holiday :)

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Hello recruiters - get your terminology straight

Published at December 10, 2007 in irritating, wake up, absurd, internets and work. 0 Comments

Ring Ring

Me (@ work): Hello?
Recruiter: Hi there, I’m a recruiter, good time to talk?
Me: Not really. (I’m not looking, but always willing to hear about a juicy position, so I usually get this far with folks, and am obviously discreet at work)
Recruiter: OK, because I wanted to talk to you about a software engineering position, should I call back later?
Me: Um. No. I’m not really looking, and in any case that’s a totally inappropriate position for me.
Recruiter: Really? Aren’t you an interaction designer?
Me: Yes.
Recruiter: Right, well, software engineering, interaction design, whatever. Should I call you later?
Me: Um. No. Not “whatever.” They are totally separate things.
Recruiter: -huffy- Alright, fine then. Click.

I’m not getting quite the volume of enquiries as in 1997-1999, but it’s definitely reached a relative fever pitch again. This has also brought with it a pile of newbie recruiters who don’t even vaguely understand the vastly different roles of webfolk (or apparently care to learn the difference).

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Big company IT/facilities shenanigans

Published at November 21, 2007 in irritating, anti-logic, absurd, duh and work. 0 Comments

Silly Conversation

Of course I wanted to ask

  1. why is the ticketing site broken/not showing me the options I need (assumed answer: because you’re on a mac, and no one uses them, except 2000+ designers, front end folks, and other smart people, therefore our intranet isn’t optimized for that weirdo niche OS)
  2. why can’t you route the ticket appropriately (assumed answer: because they’re totally separate ticketing systems and you should have been smart enough to know the difference between a printer, copier, and multifunction. duh.)
  3. why is this difference not made unambiguously clear when looking for the right place to file a ticket (assumed answer: not my job. also, i put beans in my nose)

… but I know it’s not this guy’s fault. IT in a big company is a thankless job. Front line IT folks are in the best position to know how jacked the internal systems are, and are usually in no position to influence or fix them. Just business as usual. Sigh.

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