How Bad Typography Can Help You Solve Problems

Last night, I attended my first Refresh Pittsburgh meet-up, held at the local tech startup incubator, AlphaLab. Refresh Pittsburgh is an informal group of designers and programmers, looking both to network and to learn from one another (and their occasional guest speakers). Although I'm not a designer, per se, I *am* a creative type (or so I like to claim), so I enjoy hearing how other creative types solve their problems.

Yesterday's guest speaker was Samantha Warren of Viget, a design firm in Washington DC. (She also blogs here. She gave a kick-ass presentation on bad typography, and how (and why) it can kill your web experience. And then she showed how she would have redesigned one horrible site in particular, taking us step-by-step through both her technical AND her theoretical processes.

What I appreciated most was seeing her decision-making process, and learning HOW and WHY she arrived at the conclusions she did. Sometimes, she realized her initial presumptions or goals were incorrect midway through her process, so she backtracked to redesign her end product. Fellow speakers and presenters of the world, take note: knowing that a speaker can admit to being wrong, and then seeing the steps she took to fix things, made me trust her (and her process) even more.

In the end, the two lessons that stuck in my head most clearly were:

* (Samantha's intentional lesson): Don't let the details (like typography, design or even functionality) drive the project; let the PURPOSE drive the project, and the details will fall into place.

* (Samantha's unintentional lesson): When presenting, always make sure to include the URLs of any interesting sites / services you might mention. If you catch the audience's attention, they'll want to know how to learn more.

Other cool tips and tidbits you may know (but I didn't):

* Ms. Warren considers the 3 pillars of web typography to be: Legibility, Hierarchy and Expression.

* A gent named Jakob Nielsen developed a design concept called the F-Pattern, which (counter-intuitively, if you ask me) seems to make sense.

* Ms. Warren suggests designers evaluate all information on a webpage in terms of order of importance, and then allocate the proper typographical weight and direction of attention as required.

* Use phark or siffr for image replacement -- which, as a non-designer, I can barely even understand, but I suspect some of you know what she's talking about (and it seemed important).

* Texture, texture, texture.

If any of this sounds interesting to you -- or if you suspect you would have learned more by actually attending the meet-up (rather than reading my shoddy secondhand journalism), perhaps I'll see you at the next Refresh Pittsburgh event?

Image by ErokCom.

Twitter: Strike Two

I don't use Twitter.

I signed up for it once, long ago, and never did anything with it.

Meanwhile, judging by the number of "you are ___'s newest Twitter contact" messages I receive every day, more and more of my friends are getting on the Twitter bandwagon.

Why?

Strike One

I SEE NO NEED TO ALERT THE WORLD TO MY EVERY ACTIVITY.

It seems to me that Twitter is for people who believe the world is breathlessly wondering what they're doing at all times.

I don't even wonder that about my girlfriend, much less the entirety of my buddy list.

Thus, I see Twitter as a useless indulgence, despite its potential as a marketing tool -- in essence, a necessary evil at best.

Strike Two

TWITTER'S WEBSITE IS THE SLOWEST-RESPONDING SITE IN HISTORY.

The speed with which they process my mouseclicks -- or, in most cases, don't -- makes MySpace look like the smoothest-running web app ever launched.

I entered my account today to update my preferences, and perhaps take a stab at embedding it into my blog -- just to see if it was worth the fuss -- and the "submit" button never led to a new page.

It just sat there, half-loaded, for the better part of three minutes. Which, in web parlance, is an eternity.

IF YOUR SITE IS A SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE, THE #1 THING IT NEEDS TO BE IS FAST.

Strike Three?

I haven't found a reason to completely write Twitter off my radar yet, but I haven't found a reason to rally around it, either.

To all of you out there who use Twitter: why? And what part of the equation am I missing?

Your WEBSITE Is a Poorly-Designed Website

A few days ago, I mentioned that your car -- actually, everyone's -- is a poorly-designed website.

Just now, I was forced to admit that Sports Illustrated's website is ALSO a poorly-designed website -- literally.

I've been an avid online reader of SI for years, despite their increasingly horrendous design choices. Recently, they decided that a rotating three-story graphic headline was the way to go on their frontpage. Each headline stays onscreen for a few seconds and then the next one is reloaded.

Not only is that feature annoying, and not only does it slow down my browser (and cause me to cycle through headlines for sports I care nothing about), but THE SITE AUTOMATICALLY FORCES YOUR BROWSER TO SCROLL DOWN THE PAGE because they designed their headline animator to not fully fit in most standard resolution browser windows.

Note: this scrolling is not optional. After a few seconds, no matter what else you're doing -- INCLUDING SCROLLING MANUALLY -- the site will take control of your browser and scroll down the page for you.

Name me one site you go to and voluntarily relinquish control of your browser.

I believe the main reason they do this is so they can force a reader to pay attention to the sheer overload of pointless information available on their site. More than half the page is dedicated to "junk sports," including college campus tours, fantasy breakdowns, "truth & rumors" and pointless columns written by humorists who happen to be sports fans.

Infuriating.

But this takes the cake: just now, I noticed a headline that caught my eye.

"Lidle estate sued."

Recalling that New York Yankees pitcher Corey Lidle died in a plane crash last year, I wondered what his estate could possibly be sued for now. So I clicked the link.

This is where the link took me.

(No kidding; as of 1:35 AM, this link is still live on the front page of SI.com.)

Ironic? Prophetic?

Thanks, Sports Illustrated. Perhaps you and I need some time apart.

Your Car Is a Poorly-Designed Website

I was stopped at a red light last night. I noticed the truck in front of me was dripping something from its muffler. I'm not a car expert, I have no idea what the fluid was, but it seemed unusual to me.

Then the light turned green and the truck drove away. End of story.

Except...

It didn't have to be.

404: Reason for Existence Not Found

When was the last time you noticed a broken link on a website? Did you take the time to email the site owner and tell him?

Could you even find the contact information for the site? (This is a problem Chris Brogan has railed about often, and justifiably.)

In a clean, well-designed site, a visitor should be able to do three things easily from the frontpage:

- Know what the site is all about
- Contact someone for help / questions
- Buy something / take action / drive business

If those three elements aren't present, your site is broken.

(Guess what: our STBD site is broken. Gotta fix that.)

Automonologues

A car is not a website. But, like all other aspects of our lives -- fashion, grooming, speech, personality -- it's a depiction to the rest of the world of who we are.

Most of these depictions are one-way conversations.

And, if there's a problem -- if that information is unclear, outdated or broken -- it's not always easy for a person who notices that to tell us about it. That's because we don't invite everyone into a two-way conversation about every aspect of our lives.

Maybe we should.

Carversations

Cars are designed to transport us and protect us. They're not designed to exchange information.

But what if they were?

What if every car came with a built-in GPS system that was editable in both directions? Central command could update road conditions as information was reported back from the field by responsible drivers. And, in order to access the system, everyone would need an ID -- like their license plate number.

Now, everyone on the road is interconnected to one central system. And that GPS system could also receive incoming mail, audio, video, etc. -- all from other cars on the road.

Is there an accident? An onboard camera could record images and automatically upload them to the system. All cars that routinely drive that route, or who opt to receive information about accidents in that area, would receive those images and decide to drive around the accident. As the accident clears, the images would depict that improvement, until approaching drivers would now be able to maintain their original route.

Goodbye, traffic helicopter. Goodbye, "drive at 5" news updates. Hello, real-time roadside feedback.

Subject: Your Muffler Is Leaking

Likewise, individual car owners could easily (and safely) message on another if there was a visible problem with their vehicle. From a leak to a broken turn signal to an open gas tank, all the information which we, as exterior drivers surrounding that vehicle, can see but not currently relate could now be transmitted instantly.

Social networking, taken to the next level: not just self-indulgent, but now actually useful.