Krillionology: where local and commerce connect

Re: the uncanny valley of UI design

Bill Higgins has an interesting thought piece entitled "The uncanny valley of User Interface Design"
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First, thank you Bill for finally explaining why I walked out of Who Framed Roger Rabbit in 1988... it ultimately lead to a rather painful breakup ;-). It also got me thinking philosophically, which is a rarity these days.

I find it interesting that as a designer who appreciates novel and innovative approaches, it’s apparently ineluctable human nature to grow comfortable with the familiar. Perhaps as we age the disappointments of technology for its own sake accumulate and we begin to grow intolerant of what seems to be a declining signal-to-noise ratio in the deluge of experiences out there.

The first time I saw the Flash mastery of Joshua Davis I was truly inspired, and yet, when given the choice, I routinely choose the HTML site variant over Flash. As many comments have pointed out, the innovation question is an obvious one with no easy answer.

It seems to me that finding a balance between experimentation and codified communication is at the core of what it means to be a designer. What’s appropriate? In the right environment the 90s-typographic excess of designers like David Carson felt edgy and fresh. Used indiscriminately, on detail-heavy annual reports, it was a disaster.

We need to push the envelope, but ultimately keep in mind the envelope has to be read by someone or it never gets delivered. If you have the resources, hire a user researcher, he/she will keep your design honest.

What's the word

Every organization has its own vocabulary.

Arriving in the bay area at the height of the Bubble I can vividly remember my first impressions. I left the frozen tundra north of the 49th to join high flying Ariba whose parking lot resembled a new car dealership, complete with cell phone-wielding sales guys. Not a week went by when someone didn't drive in with something shiny & new or better yet had it delivered. Favorite test fright... a colleague's new Viper.

Truthfully the materialism didn't bother me, I'd brought my own pick and shovel to this latest gold rush. What really puzzled me was the language everyone used. Product managers spoke about leveraging assets and wanted to benchmark everything. And then came prepone (ref). I'd never come across the word and thought it sounded silly, but more importantly it was used in the fictional context of advancing the release date of software (and that certainly never happened at Ariba). Hearing it, a dev manager sardonically asked if by releasing on schedule we'd be poning the release.

Krillion too has developed its own language liberally sprinkled with search/ad-related acronyms (SEO, SEM, CPM, RPM, PPC) and a few real gems we all enjoy.

By definition, our favorite word, canonical (ref), is in a class by itself ;-) There are canonical URLs (oops URIs), product-identifiers and even a T-shirt. We delight in finding new ways to work this into the conversation, and non-developers get approving looks if we manage to use it correctly from Van and Roger.

Then there is trifurcate (ref). I offered this up one day tongue-in-cheek discussing a UI problem that had, surprise... three solutions. It doesn't lend itself to easy usage and in that sense it's rather canonical.

Paul gave us accretion (ref) in response to Van annexing some of the common space between them with his technical library which had been gathering dust in his basement and now is gathering dust on our bookshelves. As our QA lead, Paul is the team's conscience and he specializes in accreting bugs in Jira.

It will take time for new words to gain the support necessary to rise to the pantheon of usage occupied by the big three, but we have candidates. Joel casually offered vicissitudes (ref) during our last all-hands and judging by the impression it made on the assembly it might rate a T-shirt of its own one day. That is if the venal (ref) fortunes of its rivals don't win out, quietly rendering it moot (which might qualify as mute).

Anyway, if you come across this post and have some good examples of words that define your company let us know. We know this linguistic experience is not canonical.

Bonnie Scotland in Pictures

It's been 33 years since this wee lad last visited Scotland. I was born and lived in Edinburgh until I was eight when the family packed up the kilts and emigrated to Canada. Blessed with some terrific  weather the September trip was emotional, inspiring, wonderous. In fifteen days I shot over 2000 images with the 5D... waterfalls, hills, lochs, harbours, cemeteries. This image gallery is a sampling.