Wisdump

Dumping wisdom on design and the web

YouTube Presidential Debate: Wave of the Future or Waste of Time?

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My first reaction to the presidential candidate debates was, “Wow, what a cool idea.” I naively believed that people could ask some really good questions that would no doubt be more interesting than the standard, “What are you going to do about health care?” ones. Don’t get me wrong; that is a valid question for any candidate in any country, but that is what always gets asked. I was looking forward to seeing hard hitting questions that struck beyond the norm of political debates. But alas, that was not what I got.

Ask And Yee Shall Receive

Unfortunately, that sub heading is not for the YouTube participants. It was the moderators that got what they wanted. What I am trying to say is that for the most part, we got the same standard questions, asked in a slightly dumber/funnier way. Now, I am not suggesting that the questions were set up. I am only saying that the odds are in favor of some people asking those types of questions. The moderators probably looked for those, and got rid of the toughest ones.

Ground Breaking?

No. Absolutely not. Unless of course asking the same question, but only you record yourself in a chicken suit with wipe effects is considered ground breaking. Seriously, what part of this was ground breaking? That it was YouTube? Big deal. The only thing that was different was that it was kind of funny, but more in a sad way than a “haha” way…

If anything, the debate proved two major phenomena:

  1. Overhyped Online Services:

    Sure YouTube was innovative… 2 years ago. But lets face it; there are far better services now than YouTube (design-wise and content-wise). The mainstream media will unfortunately always be ten steps behind the cutting edge stuff that you and I know about.

  2. American Politics are a Joke:

    Literally, these debates transformed what little seriousness there was left in the American political system. I mean, the banner and flags and strange rallies with people wearing buttons of the candidate’s face is weird enough; I am curious about how the rest of the world is seeing and/or making fun of us…

I suppose I answered my own title here; it is a resounding waste of time. Unfortunately, it appears that the format was a hit and will take place again. Next year, the dramatic hamster will ask a question about social security…

This post was written by J David Macor.

Side by Side: The Ustream.tv Redesign

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TechCrunch announced the Ustream.tv redesign yesterday, and after having a look at it I’m left with a few questions. The new design is definitely an improvement (I won’t fight that) and looks much more mature than the previous version, which seems great for their target market. But it still seems a little rough around the edges.

First off, a look at the design from a couple days ago along with the new site design:

Ustream.tv Side by Side

Oh, and I’m not even sure what to think about the Validator’s response to the new site. Where to begin?

The Flow

One of the first things I noticed was the way the “About this Show” paragraph is tucked away off to the right of the video it’s talking about. It’s uncomfortable. Then there’s the fact that the tiny two line display (ouch) has little arrows to the right to navigate up and down the description. I guess it goes to show how important the video’s description is, doesn’t it?

A little pet peeve of mine: I should know what your site (especially Web 2.0 application sites) does within two seconds of landing on the page. Make it stand out by describing it in three words if you have to (it’s worked on other video sites). And Ustream’s concept is so much better than other video sites, their edge is sharp, you would think they would want to flaunt it. Instead the “What is Ustream?” bar is so far down the page it’s almost below the fold! I’d be curious to hear their reasoning for 600 pixels down rather than right up top.

Maybe I’m not getting the style choice on this, but the “Popular Streamers/Popular Recorded” bars at the bottom seem…off. Maybe it’s supposed to look like the background repeated in the wrong place, but if that’s the case it doesn’t look cool.

Interactive?

One of the biggest points Nick made in the TechCrunch post was that Ustream made these changes to become more interactive. He references the Shout Meter, the Gallery Mode for browsing, and the Pulse Polls in particular. My criticism is much simpler than all of those things: where are all the rollovers?

In the top navigation there is a heavy rollover effect. Let’s face it, a rollover that actually produces a gradient is pretty intense. But then there are buttons that don’t have rollover features at all, some of which are extremely important buttons. Check out:

  • the “Go To Show Room And Chat” button,
  • the arrows on either side of the gallery browser, and
  • the “Learn More” button,

none of which have rollovers at all. Granted, there are a lot of cool rollover effects throughout the page (the description given for the Shout Meter, for example) but that shouldn’t be an excuse for limiting usability in a much simpler way.

Clashing Corners

On an aesthetic level, the way round edges butt up against hard edges makes me wonder. The page is bound in round edges, and many of the turns on the inside of the page are as well. But then the “Welcome to beta 3” announcement has sharp edges. I wonder whether it was intended or whether it’s actually an oversight.

I also wonder whether there were so many color schemes available they just decided to use a couple of their favorite. The top half of the screen looks like one color set, whereas the bottom looks very different. I actually prefer the bottom half more than the top (has more of a collegiate feel) but I would have liked to see some more consistency.

Compare/Contrast

We can’t help but compare this redesign to Ustream’s direct competition Stickam, which sports a design much more like the old Ustream than the new (especially the login/search area at the top). But Now I think Ustream is trying to propel itself into a different style of video website, moreso that created by sites like Vsocial and Vmix. I wonder which site they took more of the influence from. Also, notice the striking similarities between their search bar and Apple’s classic search. Pretty close, eh?

I’m left wondering whether Ustream wants to be a part of the crowd or stand out. The old and new design side by side are, in my book, pretty much equal.

This post was written by Ryan Imel, who also blogs about WordPress Plugins and themes at Theme Playground.