I very rarely do friends-only entries, because I don’t believe in them. If you’re going to write a blog, which by definition, like all good things on the web, should be shared openly, then don’t filter. If you need to, then keep a personal diary and lock it in your desk drawer.
But I’m going to make an exception tonight, because I want to vent about some personal stuff.
I’ve written about Top Sekrit Projekt without saying what it was actually about because of 1) the NDA that I signed, and 2) it is a truly stupendous, obvious idea that needs to be first to market in order to succeed. If it does, you’ll be hearing and reading about it everywhere.
We’ve been working hard to build the best site that we could. For those developers out there, you know how truly hard it is to build large transactional sites that completely validate in every way. We did it. It was cleanly designed, in a slick Apple kind of way. All CSS, no tables, and that was a stone BITCH to do.
And now, the bosses’ son wants a total redesign because it’s not “branded” enough. I tried and tried to explain about current best practice involving what the user contributes to the site, not what you force down their throats. Look at Myspace, look at Flickr, look at bloody LJ, look at whatever you want to look at – it’s about the content, and the ability to personalise your experience, rather than the oldstyle “slice-n-dice” sites with heavy graphics that we all used to do.
(Edit: removed link)
This is the person that wants to totally change the sites, days before our first user testing on Tuesday. Yep, that’s their showcase: multiple nested tables, crap design, and don’t even bother looking at it in anything other than IE. (If you know the company, please don’t rat me out – they are one of the companies that went in to fund the project that I’m heading, and I’d get fired for massive indiscretion.)
I’m sick. But, since it’s the son who’s thrown his toys out of the pram and said that they want a more “branded” site, we’re facing reverse text on deep, coloured backgrounds, multiple layers of background textures underneath text, all titles and buttons done as graphics, you name it. Jesus fucking christ on a stick.
Some days you just want to…I don’t know. Do something stupid because you just can’t fucking take it anymore. I told everyone today that I didn’t give a shit what they did…play games, fuck off early, whatever. No more working at night or on the weekend, to hell with it.
So, where now? I have no idea.
bleh. I really feel for you!
sadly, I think we’ve all been there and trying to explain to someone that css-driven, em-based texted, colour-blind legible, audio readable, user-resizable text is demanded / expected / required by users, even if it doesn’t look nice to their young eyes with perfect vision and a terrible choice in clothes. And whenever I’ve gone down this road I’ve ended up saying the awful line “because it is and you are too thick to understand it if I spend as long teaching you why it is better as it took me to learn it and that is why you [pay me | asked me] to do this site for you, and note that I said “web site” not “web shite” because that is what it will be if you go all crazy on us and your users now, ok!” (and hence don’t have a job …
Sometimes you are stick, sometimes life sticks you … {{hugs}}
Ha, that site is fucking rubbish in Firefox.
Does this son have any position in the company? I think I’d have to question why they have a designer/design team if they ‘knew’ what they wanted.
:( I’m sorry hon.
Thanks, all for your comments. I really did need to vent. I was/am just so FURIOUS. It’s true, though – you can explain until you’re blue in the face, and if they don’t want to hear, they won’t. :(