Joel Spolsky of Fog Creek Software shared his views on what makes a great product at O'Reilly Etech this morning. Here's some of his picks and pans:
Report card
Year of the Apple iPod - This is a product clearly designed for aesthetics and its wild adoption proves it. (So what if you want to change the battery? Wouldn't you rather have a gleaming, seamless skin?) Spolsky's rating, Extremely happy, positively emotional, with top-of-the-line aesthetics.
Reddit - People can come here to vote on links. What Spolsky likes about Reddit is the red alien; Spolsky found himself going back to Reddit daily so that he could see the baby-faced alien and what he was doing that day. Also, since you accrue points by voting, there a light competitive urge to return repeatedly. Spolsky's ranking: Happy, positively emotional, with adequate (but not great) aesthetics.
Motorola cell phones - The Razr is as positively thin as possible. The Pebble is designed to look like a beach pebble, an object that people like to handle. These are substantial changes from the bad design grade that Spolsky awarded Motorola last year. This year's grade: Not very happy, positively emotional, great aesthetics.
Airset calendar - Javascript and Ajax-enabled, so it's usable from your cell phone. Spolsky's grade: Happily controllable, not overly emotional, and livable aesthetics.
On aesthetics
All of the search portals use blue, green, and black. Why are they all trying to look like Google? Is that the right thing to be copying from Google? When Google came out with its minimalist home page, they were making a statement amidst the clutter of existing portals.
Spolsky's final word? Contemporary Web sites are ugly.
Tags: christine herron christine.net space jockeys o'reilly etech art technology joel spolsky
