nimbletoad blog

My wife and I ate at uWink, a Mountain View, Ca restaurant, last weekend. I have to say that this is one of the cases when the über functionality got in the way of the experience.

Everything is ordered via touchscreens adorning all of the tables. Touch the screen and boom a Grey Goose Appletini is delivered in seconds. A few more taps and I had a juicy cheeseburger.

So, what is the problem? It was dinner and I could not see my wife over the touch screen. We were at a table for 2. I shudder to think of the dining experience the table for 6 had with a pentagon circle of touchscreens in the middle.

However, I guess the usability is perfect for blind dates gone awry or dinner parties with Mountain View Google Geeks. In either case, it would be nice to hide behind a touch screen.

Hot time. Summer in the city…

What a neat way to cool off. More over what a cool piece of art. Art for art sake I can appreciate, but art driven by function is something truly special.

Millenium Park, Chicago.
The installation/fountain alternates between multicutural video images of faces and a lightshow waterfall.

So, if functionality is first, and relevancy is second, Where the hell does creativity fit in?

Simply. It doesn’t.

At least not in this chain. Creativity is the over-arching principle that guides.

It is creativity that guides our elegant, functional designs.

It is creativity that allows relevance to resonate.

Without creativity function would only be an idea, relevance only an abstract. It’s creativity that gives life.

You’ve got your website dialed in. Visitor’s can fly from page to page. Navigation is intuitive and the pages are served up instantly.

OK.

So your site now does what its supposed to do. What’s next? While a clumsy website will kill your web prescence and hinder your business, a dialed one does not guarantee success. It is only your ticket to the game.

The next step is to make it relevant. Relevancy is the key to everything in business. In order for someone to interact and eventually give you money, they have to feel that your site, services, or products are relevant.

Functionality might come first at Nimbletoad, but relevancy is a close second.