Dear BofA:
I know you have a lot on your mind lately, what with your bank purchases and the whole of the finance industry falling apart. Still, I’d like to inspire your engineers to embark upon a simple, fun skunkworks project.
You may remember cashing in the iPhone App Store craze with your free BofA app this summer. You did promise to make it less ugly. You haven’t followed through yet.
Now, we’re all busy and I sympathize. Making a nice app is hard. So I did the hard part and designed a UI for you. It’s a gift. Repay me by implementing it and sparing us all the hideous orgy of Times New Roman that is your existing iPhone UI.
Remember, I’ve done the heavy lifting. This isn’t hard. You don’t even need to do it in Cocoa. You can keep using the WebKit display your app currently uses and implement my design in John Gruber’s “shit sandwich.”
Now, the existing home screen is okay.
It’s when we actually want to get down to some banking that things go downhill:
Wow. That’s a lot of Times. Ugly, small, hard to read. Fix it like this:
Next, let’s get logged in:
Blegh. Let’s get a tab bar going. Not just because tab bars are handy, which they are, but because making the user tap an area as tiny as those menu links is just cruel to iPhone users:
There we are. The tab buttons are much easier to strike with a fingertip — less time wasted by hitting the wrong selection. We’ll start the user at the accounts breakdown, since your balance is almost always the info you want first. Next, let’s check out account detail:
Painful. Let’s better group the transaction information and use some visual cues to explain individual entries:
Not so hard. You already use those icons for desktop online banking. Now let’s transfer funds:
Making the user step through multiple screens for a single task sucks, especially in 2008. Let’s streamline this:
Better! The user doesn’t lose track of what’s going on.
Nothing crazy, here, just some simple suggestions based on existing iPhone UI conventions. I hope this helps you guys.
I built these mockups using the excellent iPhone UI PSD file. The payroll information above is speculative. I do not work for Apple. Yet.
You need to stop being a jackass. And I mean yesterday.
Know why?
No one is going to let you get away with it anymore.
Today, whether you’re an individual or a large business, you need to treat people exactly the way you want to be treated. Better than that, even. A force has emerged that encourages the golden rule and punishes transgressions against it better than any social or religious system previously devised.
As usual, I’m talking about the internet.
Let’s step back in time to January of this year. Mass Effect, one of the best and most successful gaming titles of 2007, trickled back out into the awareness of ignorant people who don’t actually play video games. This, of course, means that Fox News had to get a piece of this action.
To discuss Mass Effect, they invited pop psychologist Cooper Lawrence to appear on-air. She villified the game, indicating that its overt sexuality would train boys to view women as sexual objects.
The only problem is that Mass Effect doesn’t contain any overt sexual themes or even nudity. The game includes an optional side-plot that culminates in a less-than-racy sexual encounter. That didn’t stop Cooper from running her mouth. Speaking after the appearance, Cooper said,
Before the show I had asked somebody about what they had heard, and they had said it’s like pornography. But it’s not like pornography. I’ve seen episodes of ‘Lost’ that are more sexually explicit.
Oops.
But it was too late. I’ve written before about how passionate constituencies carry powerful messages online. There is perhaps no more passionate a group than those who play video games. Long misunderstood and unfairly stereotyped for their interests, gamers have built vast communities for themselves on the internet. Trumpeting the call to battle against Cooper Lawrence, the gamer response was swift, vicious and very public.
Hundreds of negative reviews poured into the Amazon page for her latest book. Discussion forums, news aggregators like Digg, and every tech-savvy blog under the sun buzzed with indignation. This was, gamers felt, an unjustified attack on a supremely talented game developer who had provided tens of millions of hours of enjoyment to so many.
Cooper recanted and expressed regret for her remarks. Shitstorm over.
Yet there are longer lasting effects. Nearly half a year later, scars still cover Cooper’s online presence.
Although hundreds of obviously abusive 1-star reviews were purged by Amazon, 68 still remain on her book’s page. Amazon is as much a product research tool as it is a sales channel. Cooper has lost countless opportunities to sell her book thanks to this gaffe.
The more telling after effects come when searching “cooper lawrence” on Google. Her third search result is the above Game Politics article that dryly reports that Cooper Lawrence is someone who is not too particular about speaking without first knowing her facts. She says so herself. Below that is a charmingly-titled YouTube video, Cooper Lawrence is a Bitch. Counting her Amazon book, her first page of search results contains seven negative entries. That first search engine impression is 70% negative.
Think about that.
Now, being a firebrand and stirring up controversy thanks to genuine, well-considered opinions can be good for one’s career. There’s plenty of negative response that can come from that online. That’s not what we’re talking about here. This is someone being very publicly and brazenly ignorant, pretending to be an authority and then getting caught without a fact to stand on. That hurts your credibility, which hurts your ability to sell yourself.
Mass Effect is a good game and a proud achievement. Over a hundred people worked very long hours for a very long time to ship it. Millions more people bought it and loved it and felt a debt of gratitude to the developers whose toil had so enriched their lives. Then Cooper Lawrence showed up and very publicly slurred it.
And she’ll never do it again.
If you do things that are unkind to others and you do them publicly, just remember that the internet is watching.
It never forgets.
I browse the Orlando craigslist on a pretty regular basis looking for side technology work to help knock some more holes in the ol’ student loan debt. Craigslist postings for jobs and gigs generally fall into four categories:
- Bona fide help wanted ads, with cash in trade of services
- Value-for-value trades, like unpaid modeling where the photographer will give the model a DVD-R full of pictures from the shoot
- Scam/spam posts
- Wanted: talented individual I can fuck over
Number 4 posts enrage me a great deal. Let’s look at one.
Character Artist
Reply to: see below
Date: 2008-02-01, 6:22PM EST
I am looking for someone to create me a 3D Character of a virtual human/avatar. The character is a woman age 18-21… I want this character to be shown in several different outfits…And I am hoping to find someone that knows how to draw the character in several different positions to animate walking.Please email me for further details, I have some examples of what I am looking for.. I will be glad to send those pics to you. This is a position for fun, a student who is just looking to gain experience.. I will put your name in my credits, and link to you.. if possible.Thanx! DanielleDanielle_Nicolle@hotmail.com
Let’s break this down. I am going to begin by translating it.
“I have very specific requirements for a highly-detailed, advanced-level computer animation project. Instead of paying you for your work, I will provide you with recognition within the tiny sphere that will be exposed to this project. I value your skills enough to give you credit for them, but not enough to pay you for them.”
Now, to be fair, there is plenty of work that creative or technical people sink dozens of hours into for fun rather than for pay. What these projects have in common, though, is that they almost always spring from personal inspiration and motivation. Working with a client for no pay isn’t fun — it’s a pain in the ass. Someone interested in sharpening their chops is much better off following their own muses.
This is just one of hundreds. I see it for gigs in photography, computer repair, web design, writing and plenty of others. Sometimes they get generous, though, and offer a few bucks:
Motion Graphic Needed
Reply to: gigs-536221998@craigslist.org
Date: 2008-01-11, 8:23PM ESTStartup company seeks a motion graphic (animated logo + tagline) for website. It will be the primary graphic on the homepage of the site.The total animation time will not be long (probably 15 sec or less) and the output file will be either a flash file or a flash movie file.The only downside is I don’t have much to offer as cash is minimal right now.This is a good project for a student or someone looking for a quick gig.Those interested should send me an email with at least 1-2 samples of animated logos or similar.
- Location: Orlando, FL
- it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
- Compensation: $25
You know what, dude? You can’t afford motion graphics. Any sort of reasonable designer isn’t even going to plug in his tablet for $25, much less do the dozen hours worth of consultation and work it’ll take to turn this out. Let’s be ridiculously conservative here and say that it takes only five hours, including consultation and revisions. Designer, who has unique job skills and probably a college education, is making $5 an hour, less than minimum wage.
Homie could go and work at McDonald’s for an afternoon and get a better deal.
This one is my favorite:
Needed: Web & Photo Person!
Reply to: mark@s31national.com
Date: 2008-01-22, 11:01AM ESTWe are looking for someone to expand and upgrade our website as well as work with various photo editing programs. We do events and need photos uploaded for sale and viewing. The project will be ongoing and you will be able to grow with us… We are noT looking for someone looking to score a huge payoff or a corporate way of thinking. If we did we would hire a company. We want to give a newcomer a chance to grow with a company that is fun and flexible. If you have mad skills and like getting outside now and then for a change…let us know.
- Location: Orlando
- it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
- Compensation: no pay
I don’t even know where to start with that one. I mean, clearly, anyone who wants to get paid for their talents is some sort of icky suit, right?
It’s not unique to craigslist, either. People with technology talents are constantly set upon by vultures who think that credits or a link back are fair compensation for hours or days of work. My suspicion is that the people who expect this kind of trade have no idea the sort of work that goes into learning and discharging the skills they’re asking for.
Yet, even people who should be savvy fall prey to this. A couple of years ago, when I was just out of college, Ramit Sethi reached out to me across the interwebs and offered me a remote internship with his startup, PBwiki. Sounded pretty sweet, I thought. Then I asked him about the pay. He gave me the classic line about it being unpaid at the start, but hinted at the possibility of paid opportunities down the road. This is akin to a philanderer telling one of his mistresses that at some point in the future, he’ll leave his wife for her. It sounds very compelling but very rarely is it actually true. More problematic is that once you and your employer agree that your value is $0 an hour, it’s very difficult to move your payscale into the appropriate range.
I had just started my career and had a job that paid well, so didn’t take the offer. Still, it took me a year to get used to being compensated for my talents before I could look back and see the offer for what it was: insulting. These days, Ramit is a self-styled personal finance blogger. Hopefully he advises people to sink their time into work that actually pays. Update 2/4/08: See Ramit’s comment and my response below.
To be sure, there are times where working for free can be an incredible opportunity. Working for the White House, Conde Nast, Playboy, Google or other luminary organizations is a privilege early in one’s career. But these guys aren’t Hugh Hefner or Josh Lyman looking for talent. They’re just cheapskates.
Whatever the cause, these people come off looking like assholes. You have to think that they’re getting no responses at all or the work they’re getting is shockingly awful. Word of advice, kids: next time you ask someone to do hours of work for you, ask yourself how much you would honestly expect to be paid for the same time commitment. Then you should probably double it, because if you can’t do it yourself you’re probably asking for a rare commodity.
Only you can stop yourself from looking like a dick when you go in search of good help.
“If you just ignore me I expect I shall probably go away.” – Marvin, the permanently miserable robot from the Douglas Adams classic The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Somehow it seems that the world of entertainment thinks that the above advice applies to emerging distribution methods that take advantage of the internet. No matter how many times they learn their lesson the hard way, the entertainment industry continues to screw itself.
As I write this, millions of dollars circle the drain as countless film and television projects are shuttered. Below the line crew, everyone from the boom operator to the guy who delivers scripts and checks to fancy offices, are being laid off and sent home with little hope of paying the bills. Just beyond the horizon, ad revenues threaten to evaporate as hit shows won’t be around to attract viewers to their TV screens. Hollywood today faces a work stoppage of staggering proportions. The ’88 strike was estimated to cost in excess of $500 million, and the entertainment pie was much smaller 20 years ago. There are a lot of people in a lot of pain. But it has to happen.
We’re here because once again the suits decided that if they just ignored it long enough, technology would cease to vex them. The over-arching theme of the WGA strike concerns compensation for work distributed online and through DVD.
Let’s review: entertainment reaches a crossroads with technology. Entertainment closes their eyes and prays they don’t need to act. Entertainment gets screwed.
I confess that the simmering core of iconoclasm lurking within me delights at seeing this pattern repeated with such regularity. This time, though, there’s more than just a light trimming off of some prick record executive’s expense account. This time we’re seeing real, honest, hard-working guys losing their shirts because of politics that happen well outside their world.
Creative destruction at its finest, I suppose. The bright side of this is that as more of this industry crumbles, the organizations that fall out of the other end will be smarter, leaner, better and brighter than any of the lumbering dinosaurs that plague us today. The democratization of idea distribution heralded by the internet and associated technologies is going to be the most liberating advent since the invention of the printing press. As billions of dollars in wasted budgets for crappy movies and failed TV shows have proven, a bunch of isolated, fat, old men don’t have any business deciding what makes you and I smile. They have no competence to determine what will make us laugh and cry. They are out of their depth to predict what will inspire us.
My rhetoric may sound more idealistic than I am usually wont to indulge, but make no mistake: my intentions are capitalist. Exploding artificial barriers to entry gives us a more stable, vibrant and diverse market. Cutting the head off this doddering old snake means many more people can get an audience and get paid. The idea marketplace should be a meritocracy, not a race to see who can bottle up the most exclusive resources and use them to turn out garbage.
Change is always born in pain. If it means humanity can avoid another Stealth (2005), that’s got to be worth something.
The casual observer could be forgiven for believing that public education’s goals more closely represent a circus than an earnest pursuit of growth and learning. Each player on the education stage has an elaborately choreographed role that calls for performance for performance’s sake.
The students, of course, carry the bulk of this responsibility, memorizing a routine of answers to be performed on cue for statewide aptitude testing. Teachers play the role of lion tamer in this burlesque, establishing rigid, unimaginative curriculum designed to maximize the school’s ability to deliver positive test scores. Finally, administrators like school principals are tasked with the role of ring master in these proceedings, made responsible for herding dozens of teachers and thousands of students toward some vague higher standard.
Putting aside the farce that is education tailor-made for test taking rather than genuine learning, there’s a story here in the impossible situation created for principals.
Monday morning, NPR ran a piece about the role of a principal as a school CEO. Districts look toward principals as standard bearers responsible for reducing school violence, for inspiring teachers and for innovating policy — and, correspondingly, for improving standardized test scores.
But this is a dreadful position to be in as a principal. The chief responsibility of a leader is people. Having the right people doing the right thing in the right place. More than ever, this is an exceedingly difficult proposition in public education. A principal isn’t empowered to “clean out the dead wood,” since teacher’s unions and district policies have mistaken public education for a government-subsidized jobs program. Inept teachers can’t be removed — merely shuffled around. In addition to being unable remove non-performers, a principal conversely cannot do all that much to reward high achievers. Benefits packages and compensation are inflexible realities established at higher echelons than where these putative “school CEOs” sit. Finally, even the most inspirational of generals would be hard-pressed to motivate troops as besieged as a legion of public educators. These are smart, educated individuals who know how to do math. They can see that their classrooms are over-filled, that their resources are limited and frequently out-of-date, that their students are less and less inclined to play the education game.
You want violence in schools to be reduced? It’s going to take more than clever leader at the helm. Students need a proper reason for attending school. Weekly rehearsal for the choreographed performance piece of standardized testing will not pass muster. You want the best and brightest contributing to the education of our young minds? You’ll need to do better than an empty suit pretending to be an executive even as a 10-year-old paint job peels around him. Educators need a mission they can believe in. They need resources to discharge that mission while also being able to pay their bills and live to standards befitting their hard work and contributions to the betterment of our world.
It sounds like a tall order because it’s the biggest public policy challenge in the history of our nation. So far it goes unanswered. But these reforms are essential to the survival of the next generation of Americans in an unforgiving, knowledge-driven global economy.
