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Constructive Criticism: Radar for the iPhone

Shimone Samuel — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:17:42 +0000

Radar is a free (advertising-supported) service for sharing pictures taken with a camera phone. Radar can be used with a mobile web browser or dedicated iPhone application.

Radar is intuitive, easy to use and fun. The iPhone application allows a new user to register for the service and immediately begin sharing photos.

In the interest of providing constructive criticism for the fine folks at Tiny Pictures I’ve crafted this page-by-page report on a few areas I feel could use improvement.

This report is free and released under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

If you’re interested in receiving constructive criticism on your own application or website please contact research@likewowonline.net for details.

The research contained in this report is based on a review of Radar version 1.0 for the iPhone.

Download the full report in PDF: Constructive Criticism: Radar for the iPhone

Shimone.info – A crowdSPRING Success Story

Shimone Samuel — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 21:58:48 +0000

From early challenges to eventual success, my experience with crowdSPRING has also been educational and gratifying. The design of Shimone.info is more beautiful and unique than I could have imagined.

I look forward to explaining the code and technology which power Shimone.info, but for now I will describe my experience as a crowdSPRING Buyer.

Inspiration

Having spent several weeks attempting to redesign Shimone.info, I found myself arriving at a familiar conclusion: Not being a designer by trade, I’d spent far too much time working on something I would ultimately be unsatisfied with. Looking for alternatives, I discovered crowdSPRING after reading a post on Somewhat Frank titled crowdSPRING offers lots of design options.

crowdSPRING is a marketplace for creative services such as website and logo design, illustration and marketing collateral. The format works similar to an auction. “Buyers” offer a reward for “Creatives” who submit their bids as visual designs. The Creative with the winning entry (chosen by the Buyer) receives a cash reward in exchange for their completed work.

After reading Frank’s story, I joined crowdSPRING as a Buyer and submitted my first project: The Redesign of Shimone.info.

Writing the Creative Brief

Shimone.info is powered by SweetCron, an open-source aggregator of social network activity. In my Creative Brief I provided an overview of SweetCron, described the style of design I desired and noted its personal nature. I allowed for wild and creative ideas with a specification for out-of-the-box thinking. As a requirement I stated that the design must adhere to web standards and best practices. Finally, I linked to example customizations.

Design Proposals

I received proposals from only 8 designers even though crowdSPRING guarantees a project receive 25 entries. I mistook crowdSPRING’s guarantee to denote the numbers of participating designers, but later learned that if one designer submits 10 revisions they each count as an entry.

Out of the 27 entries I received;

3 were terrible
7 were mediocre
2 were fair but ignored an important requirement from the creative brief.
1 included a lengthy diatribe on the designer’s vision but nothing more than a singular background image and later, an apology for missing the project deadline.
8 were submitted within 2 days of the project end date.
2 (+ their revisions) were very beautiful and aesthetically pleasing—1 of which I chose as the winner.

Overall I felt the talent inclined toward designers who’d received no formal training. More than half the designers ignored (or failed to understand) requirements from the creative brief and several included design elements from “free download” sites.

Buyer & Creative Interaction

The first few entries I received were variations on my existing design customized with icons, backgrounds and other elements from “free download” blogs. I was disappointed by the lack of creativity and wondered if I’d offered too small a reward to entice more professional talent.

Thankfully, crowdSPRING’s recommended that I contact several designers at the start of the project, and eventually began receiving more suitable entries. After providing additional comments I received revisions from several designers. I will highlight 3 notable interactions and for privacy purposes refer to these as Designers A, B and C.

Designer A

Curiously, Designer A contacted me after I linked to their website in my creative brief. We discussed my design needs by email but it became clear they wanted to work outside the system. I explained the crowdSPRING process and how I’d already prepaid for a winning design. Designer A replied that due to their geography they could not receive funds sent by PayPal (the payment processor). After contacting crowdSPRING on Twitter I understood there were other payment methods available and the designer’s geography would not be a problem. I forwarded this information to Designer A but never received a reply.

Designer B

Design B was an early leading contender. I hadn’t received many entries and none were more creative. While the design wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, it was a huge improvement and a stark contrast from other entries I’d received.

After reading the glowing response I left for Design C, Designer B contacted me asking if I’d found my winner. I answered honestly that Designer C took me by surprise and was now the leading contender.

The next day all entries and revisions submitted by Designer B disappeared from the project with the comment “Withdrawn: Client found his perfect design.” After seeing this, other designers followed suit.

I contacted Designer B privately and explained that although Design C was currently the top choice, 8 days remained in the project. This left plenty of time for other designers to submit entries that were possibly more creative.

Designer C

Designer C submitted the winning entry. The design was exactly what I was looking for and so perfectly suited to my tastes I could hardly contain my enthusiasm. My comments were received with professional courtesy and with a few tweaks I had a winning design. The wrap up phase went smoothly and later we discussed and revised some of the finer details by email. As a bonus, after the award-winning design of Shimone.info Designer C went on to win first one, then another and another crowdSPRING Creative award.

Lessons Learned

With the right creative brief and effective project management anyone can receive a beautiful and professional design from the crowdSPRING community. Apart from a strong creative brief, here are a few key points to remember:

Understand the difference between Standard and Pro

Pro projects start at $1000. Standard projects start at $150. This effectively divides the talent pool in two.
Personally I chose Standard and offered a $500 reward in the hopes of attracting designers from the Pro crowd willing to take a pay cut in exchange for a fun project.

Spend time on your creative brief

Download a copy of the Creative Brief and work on it offline
Make sure your Brief is complete before submitting your project
Write your Creative Brief detailed but concise
Be specific with any requirements

Browse the site for entries which match your aesthetic

Contact several designers and politely invite them to participate in your project. This will increase the likelihood of receiving entries you like.

Browse the Help Center, read the following entries:

Can I cancel a project after it has been posted? (no)
How does the guarantee work? (25 entries or full refund)
What does it cost to post a project? (15% commission)
How does crowdSPRING protect users’ intellectual property? (industry-leading tools)
Does crowdSPRING provide a contract for projects? (yes)
What if the Buyer and Creative have a disagreement? (contact crowdSPRING)
How do I update my project description? (you can’t)
Why do I have to pay when posting a project? (guarantees winning designer will be paid)
Can I change the end date of a project after it’s been posted? (no)

Read the Top 10 Tips for Buyers

Most of the points I’ve mentioned are included in crowdSPRING’s list of Top 10 Tips. In addition, pay special attention to the following:

Focus on the right details at the right time. Don’t get caught up in details before they become relevant.
Score all entries. Note crowdSPRING’s suggested scoring scale.
If you don’t like the design, make sure to score it lower. Don’t waste the creatives’ time by giving them false hope.
Consider the wrap-up process – focus on the concepts during the project and worry about execution and final tweaks during wrap-up

Final Thoughts

The visual design of Shimone.info is the product of a successful crowdSPRING Buyer experience. The process was not without its challenges but in the end, I developed a great relationship with a crowdSPRING Creative and we are both overjoyed with the results.

Recently I was contacted by both founders, thanking me and making themselves available for any questions or concerns. I appreciate the personal touch. With any company it’s the details that make all the difference.

Without hesitation I strongly recommended crowdSPRING for all your graphic design needs.

siFR and the user experience

Shimone Samuel — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 01:56:16 +0000

Scalable Inman Flash Replacement or sIFR for short, combines Flash and JavaScript to enable the display of custom fonts on a web page. sIFR is attractive to both web designers and developers as it provides an accessible and semantic alternative to other methods of font replacement.

sIFR enhanced sites require a modern web browser with the Adobe Flash plugin installed and JavaScript enabled. For visitors lacking these features, sIFR will degrade to a suitable baseline font and continue to render both on the page and in the generated source code.

In theory, sIFR is a perfect response to one of the more frustrating restrictions imposed on web designers by the medium. Unfortunately, the technology is not without its flaws and ultimately should not be considered a viable choice for web professionals.

The limitations of sIFR include: localization, extended character support, fouc, page zooming, text scaling, text wrapping, page load, cpu load, scalability, utf-8 compliance, QA testing, future-proofing, upgradability, wmode support, dynamic text sizing, DOM support, and z-index collisions.

While there may be solutions or workarounds to some of the issues illustrated here, collectively they remain a barrier to the technology’s adoption as a standard.

Wizardworks: sIFR – Point Of View (Publish date unknown)
Jim offers a god breakdown on the pros and cons of sIR and I will elaborate briefly on item #5: sIFR and Special Characters
- In order to truly support localized content, a separate .swf file would need to be created for each language, each of those .swf files would then need to contain the entire character set for that country.
- The more characters added, the larger the .swf file becomes. This is noteworthy as few if any fonts families contain every character set for all languages.
- Web designers may encounter much difficulty testing the site with different languages as the text and spacing is rendered differently depending on the user’s country and whether or not the Flash plugin is installed.
- Support for dynamic widths is also a serious issue as the Flash movie width must be explicitly set. This further reduces sIFR’s practicality as fixed widths cannot be used for text on localized websites.
Usable Type: How and When to Use sIFR (December 24, 2004)
Andy discredits much of the misinformation and concludes sIFR is best used to replace no more than one headline per page.
Virtual Elvis: Why I hate sIFR (April 29, 2005)
A fabulous tirade about the difficulties of keyboard navigation and screen zooming for an Opera user.
Leftlane: ESPN.com Looking a Bit Pixelated (February 9, 2006)
Interesting to note in the comments here that while ESPN is one of the sites often quoted to be using sIFR it is a) not currently using sIFR and b) (quoting Mike Davidson) “It was actually not sIFR at all, and even pre-dated Inman’s IFR by at least two years. It was basically inline Flash files with text… that’s all. And yes, the page is huge and so are all of those images.”
Drupal: sIFR Module discussion (February 16, 2006)
In the comments section, a user notes that sIFR text is not searchable and cannot be made both selectable and linkable. The commentary further notes a lack of respect for user-specified font settings. Someone else points out that sIFR is not utf-8 compliant.
Mezzoblue: The Pros and Cons of sIFR (October 26, 2006)
A notable article which points out the need to refresh the browser once Command/Ctrl + is used to increase font size. The inability to use sIFR for headers which are also links (the link destination will not show in the status bar) is also mentioned.
Devshed Forums: SIFR … Innovative or Designer’s junk? (April 13, 2007)
A flaming forum rant that suggests using a pre-rendered PNG instead. The author also further points out the load and latency issues inherent in sIFR.
Sitening: New Flash player breaks sIFR (December 14, 2007)
This is an important occasion to make note of. When Adobe released the latest version of their Flash browser plugin, earlier implementations of sIFR malfunctioned. While awaiting a fix, sites deploying sIFR were forced to remove the code – assuming they were even aware the feature stopped working.

Live sIFR examples

As a test, interact with these (or any other) sIFR enabled web sites using different browsers such as Opera, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer and Konqueror. Try printing, previewing, selecting text, searching for text, increasing and decreasing font size, and other page-level interactions. Keep in mind that while every individual may use the internet in a unique way, all web browsers offer the same set of features to each of their users.

For the following examples I have included sample videos showing scripted interactions with each web site. These videos are made available as a point of reference should one of them cease using sIFR or the technology evolves.

Aston Martin See demo video
1. Visit www.astonmartin.com
2. Notice how the sIFR headers render after the content.
3. Try increasing the browser font size using the keyboard or option menu. Notice the header text size does not increase with the rest of the page.
4. Using the keyboard, try selecting all the body copy (Ctrl +A in Windows, Command +A in OSX). Notice the header is not selected.
5. Using your mouse, try selecting the entire body text including the header. Notice the header is not selected or selected irregularly.
6. Using Firefox, first select the header text with your mouse and then try to deselect it.
7. Select print preview and notice the header missing (FWIW: this is supposedly fixed with media=screen in the css link)
8. Try searching for text transformed with sIFR using Ctrl/Command +F. Notice how the text is not selected.
~~Hollywood Reporter~~
1. www.hollywoodreporter.com has recently undergone a redesign and chosen not to continue using sIFR.
Offbeat See demo video
1. Visit http://www.offbeat.com/
2. Watch how the content loads first and the headers second.
3. Notice how the first header is hidden when the navigation menu floats over it.
4. Using Firebug, inspect each header element. Notice how they all use a fixed width.
5. Search for text contained in a header. Although the text is found, it is not highlighted by the browser.
6. When viewing the demo video, note that although the word “Bach” is found 3 times in the header, it is not highlighted during a page search until a fourth attempt to find the word (which also appears in the body) or after selecting Highlight All as an option.
7. Attempt to open any of the header links in a new tab or window.
8. Block futura.swf using the AdBlock Plus plugin for Firefox and watch the headers disappear (FYI: This has been fixed in a recent release of sIFR).

Final thoughts

When designing web sites, our foremost concern should be usability and the user experience. At no point should our visitors be forced to relinquish the basic comforts and features afforded by every modern browser.

As it stands, sIFR is not the hot topic it once was, likely for some or all of the reasons noted above. Many big-name sites are touted across the Web as using sIFR including: MSNBC, ESPN, Nike, ABC News, Visit Las Vegas, and The US Navy. At the time of this writing, none of these web sites are using sIFR.

With that said, sIFR continues to be actively developed and version 3 is already in beta. As an entirely volunteer-based effort, the sIFR team should be applauded for their continued contributions to this ambitious project.

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