Joel Spolsky spent 15 minutes at ETECH today presenting his grades on the state of a few products. I don’t know if it was due to the short time he had, but his presentation came across as half standup comedy, half presentation.
His Grading Formula™:
His first example was Reddit.com - he goes to the site because of the Reddit alien. It looks like a human baby, and babies are cute. (note: WTF?)
Happy: A
Emotions: A
Aesthetics: B
Final grade: A
Motorola: Razr / Pebble
Happy: D
Emotion: A
Aesthetics: A
Final grade: B
Internet Calendars
He bashed all the stupid web-based calendars that have popped up lately, and bashed the ancient Yahoo Calendar. Then he brought up Airset. His litmus test for a good calendar was whether or not he could enter his flight times and info into the calendar. Airset, also has a java phone app that Joel claims doesn’t suck.
Happy: A (control)
Emotion: B
Aesthetics: C
Final: B
Contemporary web design: F
He said something along the lines of:
“All contemporary web design is ugly. Enough with the pastels and Arial! You’re all copying Google. That’s not what made Google Google. Google’s was making a statement against the portals of yore. When you copy their fonts, you’re not making a statement. So, Web site design in general gets a F.”