485 karma · joined September 12, 2008
Imagine looking at a list of 500 servers and trying to determine how their aggregate memory usage was trending in real-time.
To quickly address your concerns:
1. Servers that are critical turn red and blink - there's no need to filter anything since your eyes have already done it.
2. This tool isn't really designed to be a gateway to arbitrary servers; it's showing you anomalies, problems, and aggregate trending.
3. I think this could be a fair point, but with only 3 (clearly labeled) axes, I think it's hard to suggest that the learning curve for digestion the information is incredibly steep. If you actually think how it's set up at the moment is too confusing, I'd love to hear suggestions.
We leave this up on the big screen at the office and it makes it very easy to tell when something untoward is happening with our servers, without really having to devote direct attention to the visualization. We designed it so problems stand out and make themselves known to you.
One of our guiding principles is to move quickly and take user feedback though, so if you've got any constructive criticism, let's keep the discussion going!!!
EDIT: Will trade beer for an invitation ;)
These people have other (good) jobs. Cindy Gallop (Founder/CEO) is a (quasi)retired ad exec. Her last web experiment: makelovenotporn.com. She talked about it at TED last year. No revenue model there. Oonie Chase is creative director at Blast Radius. The list goes on.
Plus, not less than 3 people on the about page have the word "Code" in their job title, so uhh... fuzzy math.
Knowing how to build a web page lets you begin to grok how the web works. A better understanding the medium will produce better results, in general.
In practice, however, in a startup working on an app of sufficient complexity, it's not scalable for the creative to be designing and coding at the same time. More time spent fidgeting with HTML means less time iterating on UX and aesthetics. At some point, someone needs to completely own the design.
My personal experience is that a prolific dev team will easily backlog you with features that need UI. I often have to run with my first or second mock-up because time is so critical.
All that said, I can't agree more that designers should learn to code. Print isn't dead yet, but at some point it has to get there. Being fluent in new media is about survival.
Sounds glib, but render down the actions and incentives of participation on the site. In a business-focused environment where there's opportunity to influence a large group, whether for direct commercial gain or reputation-building, competition will necessarily arise.
We're all socially engineering each other all the time.
Take away posting attribution and karma and it mightn't be that way, but those are big incentives for continued participation, once a person is invested. Could the site exist without them?
EDIT: 100 points and some futzing created so much feedback I ended up with a little cyclone going for a while.
EDIT: pic -> http://i.imgur.com/qhsDnl.jpg
I agree; it's grossly wide and so thin as to be almost illegibly sparkly when it's black-on-white. I don't even want to imagine what this face would look like knocked-out on black.
There's also a good comment on the source page about distinguishing zeros and ohs, especially when coding.
I'll concede it's not the best - but most of it is decent advice. The only real exception I take is with his suggested practice of underlining text for emphasis; obviously that's a no-no, especially on the web.
Also, I think we can reduce the author's assertion that one should use Fibonacci numbers as a model for type size down to something more basic and useful: choosing to use a mathematical sequence to inform structural design decisions can assist one in creating work that has stronger internal relationships. If there's a rhythm and harmony to type size that is congruent with the spacing of the underlying grid, I think the work will tend to feel tighter and more elegant than if there's no underlying intelligence informing those decisions. Not to say that one can't shoot from the hip and win a few, or that a little chaos isn't beautiful - but using a regular system will tend to produce more regular results, particularly if it's one (like Fibonacci numbers) that are visible in the world around us and have been informing art for hundreds of years.
Common sense says that a culture's views on what is aesthetic and acceptable are largely informed by its environment and history. I don't think we necessarily need a study to tell us that the Fibonacci/golden ratio thing has a certain inherent beauty; the evidence is out there in all the art that's been produced using those numbers as a foundation.
That said, sometimes it can be worth it to sacrifice ease of consumption for the extra hierarchical boost you can give an element with a more distinct separation from surrounding copy.
Also, with client-side rendering on the web, I think many of the "rules" of typography just don't apply in the same way that they do to book design, etc.
The post was a good beginner's guide to typography though!
What really bothers me is that, on the whole, it feels like the designer put more effort into the flourish than into creating a design that would support and enhance the communication of the content.
It's the (wrong) idea that you can appropriate these stylistic elements that will make a design appear current, cool, or 'with it' - and that somehow adding in what all the old-timers would call "bells and whistles" is a worthy trade-off for the practice of good design.
It's a silly and needless ornamentation that wasn't cool or interesting when the first person did it, and became even more worthless and boring with each successive use. Bahhumbug!
I'll hug it and kiss it and apologize if I see it used in a way even remotely relevant to the context of the content, or integrated into the visual language of the design (e.g. on a blog about origami), but until then, I'm a hater. I'd rather see drop shadows under blinking text; at least that would be quasi-original.
Also, the blue logo area pops so ridiculously hard it makes it impossible to keep my attention focused on the rest of the page. I'd tone it down to a smooth #80a7d3, like you see in the image I linked above.
EDIT: Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled w3 finally redesigned the site; on first impression it appears to be a marked improvement.
I also think you must have missed the comment I was responding to, so I'll excuse what sounds like a case of unbridled pedantry as mere ignorance. Take a minute to read the parent comment and see if you can divine the logical connection between my "straw men" and the context the comment came from. Is it possible that "sensible female spouses" might inhabit a household that already has an entertainment center?
I posit that if you can see past your nose, you can see that for people who aren't already burdened with a hoard of physical media they want to continue to consume, Boxee has the potential to stand-in for everything in an entertainment setup except the TV.
And yeah, I'll concede that I should have qualified "literally" with "appears to" - I just didn't imagine that anyone here would be douchey enough to quibble :P
It's a cube. The only challenging element here is that it's seated off-axis. I'm amazed that such a simple translation of form has provoked such markedly vehement negative responses from a certain cross-section.
Again, I think this is probably evidence that Boxee has targeted a very specific market segment. I doubt they're interested in appealing to "sensible female spouses" - those people already have an entertainment center and are signed up for netflix or blockbuster by snail mail.
I'd encourage all the folks immediately tempted to rage on the design of this device to take a step back and realize that if their first reaction upon seeing it is violent revulsion and nausea, it's probably wasn't intended for them in the first place.
Think about the market segment who, in recent history, has dominated CD purchases and what this device might mean as a distribution system targeted at them - but for tv, film, etc.
It seems as though there's much less incentive for an individual with a rack full of legacy entertainment equipment to purchase an all-in-one device.
Specifically regarding the visual cues we see in the design - the box is literally breaking the plane of whatever it's placed on; the cube sinks into or emerges from what's below it.
The aesthetics of the product seem to indicate that it's aimed at an audience who doesn't own a collection of hardware it wouldn't "fit in" with; for these folks it might function as a centerpiece, rather than a tumor in a homogenized amalgamation of units.
The intense, ear-crushing metal also confers the added bonus of warding away pesky human distractions.
also, they make it super easy to buy music that you like. i just wish more artists on the site had stuff for sale!
That said, I think the interface for adding modules could be more efficient if it functioned a little more like the iTunes search bar - just pull stuff in as I type.
Also, there's no reason to take me to a new page when I add a module - it's a waste of time. Try some sort of lighter-weight confirmation... maybe just add it to a sidebar panel that lists the modules I've added and give me a little flash so I can see it popped up there. Otherwise, I have to wait for this page to load that doesn't tell me anything new.
Keep at it!
The website sucks, but they're cheap!