trapped in the paperless, wireless, timeless and spaceless office

I’ve just seen on TV the ad for terminalb.org, the self procclaimed “public domain database of design, architecture, image and advertising creativity in Barcelona” created by the ADG-FAD from Barcelona, build by Double You and publicly funded.

I went there and I was astonished to see the implementation of the site. It made me think of the things you shouldn’t do in a project like this.

1. Don’t put fences to data.

Why just accept the self called creative people from Barcelona? Accept people from all over the world and let them give their procedence. You’ll have much better data and still have the creative people from Barcelona.

2. Flash?!?

Why use flash to create hyperlinks when there are already HTML hyperlinks? Why hide URLs? Why break the page navigation? Why render the browser’s backbutton (the most used button in a browser) useless? Why render cut & paste useless? Why hide from Google? Do I need to go on?

This approach to the web was wrong since Flash was used for other than animation many years ago. Even more so in 2006.

3. Loading? Loading what?

Another relic of the past that still bugs users. As a rule of thumb: you see a loading page, hit the back button and go somwhere else.

4. Choose language splash screen.

Don’t make users tell you twice the language they speak. They’re already telling you with their browser’s language so why ask them in the first screen? (After the loading!)

5. Don’t call a social network a database

A database where you sign-in to and post your profile to get in touch with people with your same interests? Sounds like a social network, doesn’t it?

6. Don’t change interface conventions

Don’t make the user learn how the interface works at every click. Don’t design just for fun or just to impress your customer. Impress the user by sticking to standards.

7. Don’t use unreadable fonts

Why still follow the fad of small fonts which can’t be enlarged according to the user’s browser settings? Probably short-sighted people can’t be creative so why bother.

8. Don’t use animations to get to data

People want data, but you are convinced they’re wrong and insist on showing the same slow animation every time they try to access some contents.

9. Don’t ignore RSS feeds

If you’re a member of a social network you’re most probably interested on who joins in. You probably would like to subscribe to the RSS feed to keep up with new memberships.

10. Don’t use the .org just for the sake of it

Using the .org domain won’t make you cooler or more web 2.0ish just because every cool project in the web 2.0 is open source and uses a .org domain. If your website sucks hiding behind a .org only makes things worse.

11. Don’t reinvent the wheel

There are already many social software networks. Linkedin, Openbc or MySpace. It’s already there and with a user base of millions. Probably many of the people in terminalb.org are already on some other social network.

Or maybe not if they’ve ever used a real social network.

Worst of all is that we’re all paying for this as the Catalan Goverment is sponsoring this project that gets nowhere near other free, open-source, peer2peer, social networks. Had they consulted me I could have made big money just pointing them to MySpace.com. They would have got a much better service and probably for half the price.

See it for yourself at http://www.terminalb.org