Here we are. Something new just broke into the web : get paid for doing something. Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and Google Answers are sure a serious threat to our benvolent numbr-sharing model. I want to consider it as an opportunity : we could actually PAY people to post numbrs if we make sure that they catch some ads on our site… This drives dynamics into our ecology of numeral information gathering. We should also separate the free numbers from the paid ones.
10 days after FredB released the alpha version of our numbr machine, I still can’t manage to improve seriously on the exisiting product. The B added tags and a tag cloud and we agreed to work on logging and profile description during the last friday fish (and chips @ the Cambridge Arms, good 8,50€). I played with this alpha like it was a toy and couldn’t come with clear improvements. Sure, everything can be tuned but this rough tool basically does it.
Profiles management has to be added ASAP in order to run an alpha-beta 1-week test session during early summer.
It came up quite quick since the last post. The last Friday Fish focussed on simplification and basic goals. The B spent some lunch breaks and last night on it and we have an alpha version of the product. It is basic but, as some would say, it’s a rolling chassis to explore. Hell I did it, remving some data and adding / pasting some new. It’s easy and actually quite fun. The information looks quite funny because : easy to read, mixed, oriented and easy to catch. I hope the full product will come out this way.
Yesterday, all our feelings seemed so far away but we managed to complete the graphic guidelines for our front page. Today, a cake is needed to celebrate the birth of the “B”. May the gods of rapid dev and web 2.0 bring him success and happiness.
The Friday Fish can’t explain it all. We agreed on removing some of the initial specs to the project on the assertion that we couldn’t come to a simple way to pre-tune them. We actually decided to go for a dumber number… because it makes sense.
Like an old person, France takes a nap now and then. Forget about working in December, May and August is a good way to begin with the old lady. Unfortunately, long weekends are anything but holidays. Why? Because most of us have to rush on day jobs to compensate.
BTW, the second Friday Fish meeting between FredA and FredB was efficient for it’s magnitude in reducing the todo list to a 2 pages wizard that may end to be a true tool by itself. Can’t wait. …er, the Taco fish was great but the vegetables were a bit munchy.
The A and the B of this whole “gizmo to be” share most of their reflexions through a Backpack collaborative environment. But some things have to be blogged to make sure they show up to some interested eyes. I had real trouble to find reference widths (in pixels) for “good apps”. SO I came up with some field research that show :
That’s it for now. Live in peace.
Yes. And nav design is also a real job. Reality stroke me last night while I was fighting bare hands with the worst spyware attack I ever had on the ugly Shuttle that stands to be my home PC.
Interface design is certainly a good starting point as long as you already have decided what kind of content it will have to handle. As our Numbrs are dynamic little critters, I fight with the content definition and the way we want them to be handled by our potential user. If I do well, BigNumbr will be a pleasure to play with. But if I fail… the dev will handle it 
Let me post a short one today to celebrate the first revamping of our “behind the scenes” blog. Why ? Because it was done by FredB on the “more with less” approach we share for this adventure — and many others. Less design would be no design but this turns to be the most readable contraption available this side of web publication.
The full team is composed of two separately adjustable entitites : FredA and FredB.
FredA : 39, information designer, graphic developper, marketing copywriter and albino. Pro @ aecom.org (in french), Bot @ liremane.blogspot.com
FredB : 33, software architect. fredbrunel.com
U want more ? Nope, not yet.
