In Macy’s at closing time, I headed for the exit that goes directly into the Metro Center station, only to find a locked door and a guard telling a confused tourist “The Metro’s closed.”  ( I assured the now frantic woman that the Metro was actually still quite open, that this guard had simply locked this door). 

How much would it cost Macy’s to keep that same guard (or one better at communicating with customers) stationed at that same door, but leave it unlocked until the store was emptied? Wouldn’t that simple act provide the convenience of allowing Metro customers to use the exit they are familiar with?  Instead Macy’s forced this tourist, and I and all their other paying customers out onto the streets of downtown DC at night to find our way back to the Metro ourselves.

Has no one ever wanted to display a slideshow in the order they choose?  This can’t be a new idea.  Yet, unless you are uploading your slideshow onto the web or importing it into Powerpoint or Flash, this is unachievable.

-Windows Explorer will not save your custom order, once you leave that folder it reverts to the sort by name or date.

- Picaca 2 will allow you to create an album and set the order, but does not provide a means for saving that album.  Trying to export the album will result in a new order that is not only not your intented order, but not sorted by date or name either.  It’s a completely random new structure.

Perhaps one of the Apple apps has a solution, but for me and my PC, we are left with having to rename every picture (A001.jpg, A002.jpg…) so they will be forced to keep the intended custom order.

This can’t be the best approach.  What have you discovered?

Spec. documents are faulty, they are often too cumbersome to read (let alone write). They dive into such specifics that the developer may assume that all the details is addressed. That’s when pragmatic thinking and common sense are taken out of the equation.The preferred method is to tell the development team a story; a very simple one sentence story. This story has a single character who is trying to achieve a single task, such as “As a frequent flyer, I want to be able to check how many mileage points I have” or “As a parent, I want to be able to see my student’s grades”.   That’s all that’s needed that’s the story.

Unlike a spec document, this story is not contractual, it is the desired goal, which can be complimented with the criteria of how this was be deemed acceptable (i.e. “All grades are displayed together; Parents can see grades, but public can not.”).

Suddenly, the development team is back to doing what they do best, providing solutions.  They are driving how they will technically achieve this goal to fulfill the story, based off the acceptance criteria.

I am working on trying to get the father-in-law-to-be’s brick and morter store online. I have a site design put together, and because it’s a competitive industry, it needs to be good to get any hope of attention.

Here’s my issue. I need a shopping cart, and most of the ones I see are either 1) too complex to be able to be maintained by someone who isn’t web savvy and 2) built on really constricting and ugly templates that beyond be subjectively horrible will diminished any consumer confidence.

Can anyone recommend a good shopping cart for a new online business that is intuitive and allows some non-templetized styling?

Update: I found it. A shopping cart that has an obvious care for marrying good clean coding with a simple and functional cart application. It’s Shopify.

Editors can be so easily overlooked when talking about creative types. It is often forgotten that amidst the scanning for spelling or punctuation errors, they have to creatively synopize and sell the article in only a handful of words.

I really enjoyed this article headline from The Motley Fool (circled below), it made me click through to an article I would otherwise never have read, which in my book means it triumphantly succeeded.

I have a cell phone, iPod, portable DVD player, and PDA that are all quivering because they are about to become paperweights as soon as I finish serving the second year of my current Sprint contract. If the last day of the contract is October 1st, then come October 2nd I will be in line at the Cingular store for my new iPhone. I’m drinking the kool-aid on this one. I can see how it will suddenly change everything. Not convinced, try watching this video.

I can’t think of any Olympic logo that is really good, excepting the five rings themselves. What is this one? Is it a map? Is it numbers? Is it indecently displaying a bloke on the left and a woman on the right? This abstract mess is the new logo for the Olympics. Seth Godin pulled the quote in defense of it, and it sure doesn’t sell me. I keep wondering how this made it to the public. Isn’t this exactly why there is so much red tape in creative design?

The key to a remarkable photograph is seeing the world at a slightly different artistic angle. I’ll wager then that the key to a remarkable sculpture is presenting the work in a slightly different way. For Nathan Sawaya, that unique angle is using Lego’s.

I used to have thousands of these things all over our house as a kid. I build everything from moonlanders to cityscapes, but I never had that inginiuity to try to create art.

See Sawaya’s collection of Lego Art over at CNN.com

Check out the new billboards going up in Orlando International Airport (MCO) in preparation for Star Wars Weekends and MGM Studios. I want to believe I appreciate this for being eye-catching creative advertising, but who am I kidding, I am simply marking out because I’m, at heart, a huge Star Wars fan.

Traffic on I-95 in Delaware has always been surprisingly terrible, made worse by the fact that you have to pay a two dollar toll for the privilege. So, when driving home from Delaware yesterday, I was excited to see this billboard:

DelDot is stepping up to improve the experience, dial down the congestion. I am on board. What’s the new plan? What’s the 5th lane? Upon arriving home, I quickly went to my computer to see, and disappointed and embarrassed found this:

Let’s go through what’s wrong here…

THE HOME PAGE
What it should be: A synopsis of what the project is, a map of the area it will impact and a timetable of when work will be ongoing, as well as an area for breaking or current news, such as where and when to expect construction delays.

What it is: An oversize version of the same horrid logo used on the billboard (it takes a rare stroke to make a logo that works equally poorly on both a black and white background).

THE INTERIOR PAGES:
What they should be: Presuming we want to keep the six links to different areas of known congestion in Delaware (which isn’t the best navigation, but works effectively), the subsequent pages could be a more focused look on how and why each of these areas will be impacted by the project, an explanation of where they fall in the overall timeline, and a map or diagram of what the results should look like.

What they are: Photo galleries. Each page has a series of photos of the current state of that area. No context (as in “Before” with “Projected After (coming soon)”), no explination and of no value to anyone.

I take that back, the photos and the information buried somewhere on the site about the winning bidder on the project are likely relevant information for contractors who want to ascertain as much as they can before they put in their bid. But, if the site is for contractors, then WHY BUY OUT A BILLBOARD ON 95 TO PROMOTE IT?

The costs of even one of those billboards (and there are more than one) for just one month will cost well beyond the cost of hiring a freelance web designer to properly architect, redesign and add real value to this site. And if you were thinking that perhaps DelDot will add that information once it has it defined, I will link you to this 43 page Powerpoint proposal in PDF format, buried on the site that includes relevant information, diagrams, maps, timetables and details that people will actually want to know about The 5th Lane Project.

On page 11 of the PDF it is mentions that this current state of I-95 is Level of Service F (for failing). I have to submit the same grade for current state of the I-95 DelDot website. I hope that as they put millions of dollars into fixing the former, they think to put a few hundred dollars into overhauling the latter.