I’ve always laughed at clients who insist on printing out websites for review. It’s like looking at a picture of a painting… The medium itself is what makes the thing what it is. Once you remove the media, the identity of the thing you’re reviewing is essentially lost.
But when I saw this slide in the excellent slide deck called Good vs. Great Design by Cameron Moll I sort of wanted to print a website. Now I have no idea what Cameron is saying during this slide in the real presentation. Maybe he’s making fun of people who print websites too. But what I see is a tactile way to review content and hierarchy.
There are lots of markup tools for online mockup reviews. But they all feel like using a butter knife to cut steak. You want to directly interact and scribble with your hands, not draw boxes and type text in Markerfelt. Why not print out a website big, stand 10 feet away and blur your eyes? We’ve been doing that stuff for print work for years. Maybe a change in perspective will help you focus more clearly on making the site read at a glance. Plus being able to doodle, sketch, and cross things out is always a liberating experience.
It’s not fun knowing someone hates you. “Hate” is such a strong word anyway. But…
“The world is full of very average things made by people who don’t want to upset anyone, or too eager to please their peers. I believe you have to have an opinion – choose daddy or chips, I really don’t mind, just don’t say “I don’t really know”. And when you have opinions and strongly held beliefs you’ve got to be prepared to get some flack – in fact that’s part of the deal.You can’t have the nice feedback without accepting that some people are going to hate what you do.”
“...so many people want social media enabled blogs and content management and WordPress+WooThemes gets us a few steps up the ladder towards great sites without the pain.
1. Install WordPress
2. Install an appropriate WooTheme
3. Apply our own styling
4. Select the appropriate plugins
5. Import content from Jumpchart
6. Polish it up and integrate with anything else
7. Launch for a happy client
Explaining to people the benefits of WordPress and WooThemes gets us most of the work we pitch for. It won’t be long and we’ll need another WP developer to cope!”
It’s in the comments over at WooThemes. Sounds pretty slick.
“Designer Luke Wroblewski argues that “using dummy content or fake information in the Web design process can result in products with unrealistic assumptions and potentially serious design flaws.” He also explains how these designs usually fail when real content is added.”
“‘Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration.’ – says web designer and author Jeffrey Zeldman.”
“What we call here a Black Swan (and capitalize it) is an event with the following three attributes. First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable. I stop and summarize the triplet: rarity, extreme impact, and retrospective (though not prospective) predictability. A small number of Black Swans explains almost everything in our world, from the success of ideas and religions, to the dynamics of historical events, to elements of our own personal lives.”
I bought a Christmas gift for someone in my family from http://llbean.com last year, and I’ve been on their mailing list since. I’m continually impressed at how smart and well-crafted their advertising is. There is a reason they’ve been able to stay relevant for 95 years. They know how to treat customers.
Here’s an example from today’s emailer:
While every other company is trying to spam me, sell my email address, and cross-sell the hell out of me, they politely ask if I even want to keep receiving their emails. While everyone else buries an “unsubscribe” link in 6pt type in the footer, they flat-out ask me. Remember this isn’t a catalog that costs $2.50 to print and mail- it’s an email that is essentially free to send. It’s not about benefitting them. They’re asking because they would like to be asked if our roles were switched. Brand equity attained.
We think it’s important to be okay with failure- and make the most of it. But once you’ve accepted it, and it actually happens, shouldn’t your (for lack of a better word) self-therapy continue? If it was your own failure and no one else’s, you need to help your teammates avoid the same mistake.
No need to get all mushy, but it helps to talk about it. Keep Reading
Posterous believes in their product, and is willing to stick its neck out for it. They didn’t insult anyone outright- and if another company was insulted, they should step back and evaluate what can be done better. Keep Reading
I’ve always laughed at clients who insist on printing out websites for review. It’s like looking at a picture of a painting… The medium itself is what makes the thing what it is. Once you remove the media, the identity of the thing you’re reviewing is essentially lost. 
