Skip to main content

Thing thang

I find the Yellow Pages website unbelievably complex. it is horrible to use. Worse. Impossable.

Telecom recently sold its directories business. The new owner is spending up large online and on television (with the creepiest ads I have seen for a long time - disembodied scorched black hands scampering around and geting stuff done - "Let your fingers do the walking" taken to the revolting extreme) - weird to see it in an episode of Nip Tuck centred on an airliner that had crashed and burned(double whammy a Brazilian plane went down in Sao Paolo today burning alive all aboard). All round not a good scenario.

Though the blog is inactive (long story) you should read back through the archives of Creating Passionate Users.

Might also be worth listening to Sam Morgan of Trade Me talking about design isues for his very successful business. Better still - watch it. Here.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Go figure

Took my daughter shopping tonight. We had dinner out. Got back home late. She laid her new clothes out in neat rows so she could choose what to wear for tomorrow. She's 5. I see her just every second weekend. How can such incredible errors of judgement (marrying my daughter's mother) result in such a wonderful little human being? Go figure

Mac Air Music

I love the idea of the Mac Air but, call me old fashioned, …no disk drive? How will I watch Ratatouille, Toy Story, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo, Cars and A Bug's Life on DVD? The music on the MacAir launch commercial is terrific. I tracked the artiste Yael Naim's video for you. What is the name for this genre (Regina Spectre et al)? Apparently Steve Jobs chose the track personally for the TVC. Order from Amazon: Splash out:

Sexist Advertising and stereotypes

Advertising lives in the short-form world. Because mass media is so expensive the 30 second commercial is conventional and because there is so much clutter simplified signals are essential to 'cut through'. One form of communication short-hand used as a default is the stereotype - "A stereotype can be a conventional and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image, based on the assumption that there are attributes that members of the "other group" have in common. Stereotypes are sometimes formed by a previous illusory correlation, a false association between two variables that are loosely correlated if correlated at all. Though generally viewed as negative perceptions, stereotypes may be either positive or negative in tone." In the 1950's and 60's when men dominated advertising stereotypical impressions of women as inferior or subservient were not only commonplace but usual. It was normal to show women as housekeepers, largely because most wer...