IAM sues Razorfish for Poor Design
July 14, 2000 12:08 PM Subscribe
the site is rather bad. i mean, judging by the kind of standards razorfish goes by.
posted by tiaka at 12:24 PM on July 14, 2000
posted by tiaka at 12:24 PM on July 14, 2000
Hmmm . . . seems like it ought to be liquid, and it ain't.
posted by aladfar at 12:42 PM on July 14, 2000
posted by aladfar at 12:42 PM on July 14, 2000
Could this become a new buisness model for cash strapped start ups?
posted by remo at 12:58 PM on July 14, 2000
posted by remo at 12:58 PM on July 14, 2000
Imagine being a junior designer on this project. So proud, sweating so many hours, and then... this. I think remo has hit the nail on the head here.
posted by antony_hare at 4:45 PM on July 14, 2000
posted by antony_hare at 4:45 PM on July 14, 2000
Be afraid Web Designers..... BE VERY AFRAID.
posted by EricBrooksDotCom at 4:53 PM on July 14, 2000
posted by EricBrooksDotCom at 4:53 PM on July 14, 2000
Strangely enough, Razorfish's stock went UP after this was announced. ???
posted by wiremommy at 5:06 PM on July 14, 2000
posted by wiremommy at 5:06 PM on July 14, 2000
I don't think this has anything to do with a cast strapped start up. I looks like IAM gave specific requirements to razorfish (probably based on their target demographic, rather amatuer web users, AOL) and it seems that those were not met.
The site just isn't built to be very compatible. As an example when surfing through it on my ie/mac I noticed you cant even see the headshots in the featured portfolios. This is just one example of many fatal flaws in this site's programming. They couldn't have done much usability testing on this site. Razorfish would be smart to work out some sort of out of court settlement that includes revisiting the site's implementation.
posted by brian at 5:47 PM on July 14, 2000
The site just isn't built to be very compatible. As an example when surfing through it on my ie/mac I noticed you cant even see the headshots in the featured portfolios. This is just one example of many fatal flaws in this site's programming. They couldn't have done much usability testing on this site. Razorfish would be smart to work out some sort of out of court settlement that includes revisiting the site's implementation.
posted by brian at 5:47 PM on July 14, 2000
Strangely enough, Razorfish's stock went UP after this was announced.
I don't think that's so strange -- only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about, after all. At least their visibility has been increased by this, and that counts for something.
posted by webmutant at 5:58 PM on July 14, 2000
I don't think that's so strange -- only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about, after all. At least their visibility has been increased by this, and that counts for something.
posted by webmutant at 5:58 PM on July 14, 2000
um...this is actually pretty indicative of what goes on in the web design market: design and programming are drifting further and further apart. i've seen several cases in which designers have NO clue what technology can/can't do, which i always assumed was a sin (particularly in this medium).
sadly, i could see designers looking at the strict spec they're given on this job and just going "oh, how limiting" and then specifying just whatever. a knowledge of tech is just not in the designer's assumed skill set. in fact, i don't think there are many of us who even can write html. there are even less who can think of technology in conceptual terms. it's a big problem.
another point: razorfish's reputation is built on the core office's skills from way back when. the company as it stands now is a big rollup, and content/skill has been seriously compromised over the past couple of years. i can understand, in the current climate, how a situation like this could happen.
(that opinion, by the way, is mine and mine alone. just in case anyone's feeling particularly litigous.)
posted by patricking at 7:47 PM on July 14, 2000
sadly, i could see designers looking at the strict spec they're given on this job and just going "oh, how limiting" and then specifying just whatever. a knowledge of tech is just not in the designer's assumed skill set. in fact, i don't think there are many of us who even can write html. there are even less who can think of technology in conceptual terms. it's a big problem.
another point: razorfish's reputation is built on the core office's skills from way back when. the company as it stands now is a big rollup, and content/skill has been seriously compromised over the past couple of years. i can understand, in the current climate, how a situation like this could happen.
(that opinion, by the way, is mine and mine alone. just in case anyone's feeling particularly litigous.)
posted by patricking at 7:47 PM on July 14, 2000
I gotta say that, given AOL's market share, making a site that won't work with their browser (crappy though it may be) is just asking for a lawsuit.
posted by aaron at 5:14 AM on July 15, 2000
posted by aaron at 5:14 AM on July 15, 2000
This is a continuing thread of web designers just being arrogant and not listening to the end user. They design unusable sites that look pretty for their designer friends while neglecting their customer.
posted by owillis at 11:22 AM on July 15, 2000
posted by owillis at 11:22 AM on July 15, 2000
Arrogance or ignorance? To me, it's more indicative of the way in which people who get the web in a holistic way -- normally people who've been around since Mosaic -- get pushed into management positions, while the job of putting sites together gets hived off to rookie designers, builders and coders who don't communicate any more because of office politics.
(And of the way in which the big design houses -- the Razorfishes and AGENCY.coms -- have expanded their empires and their tiers of middle-management while shedding those employees with the "vision thing" to boutique startups such as 37signals. I've seen this expansion of the besuited gut in quite a few places.)
posted by holgate at 3:24 PM on July 15, 2000
(And of the way in which the big design houses -- the Razorfishes and AGENCY.coms -- have expanded their empires and their tiers of middle-management while shedding those employees with the "vision thing" to boutique startups such as 37signals. I've seen this expansion of the besuited gut in quite a few places.)
posted by holgate at 3:24 PM on July 15, 2000
I would be really interested in seeing this wholly "unusable" buy-side tool. How possibly unusable could it possibly be that it would garner that much attention? Anyone work there that wants to share a URL?
posted by magnetbox at 9:52 AM on July 16, 2000
posted by magnetbox at 9:52 AM on July 16, 2000
« Older "I'd rather take a hot stick in the eye then deal... | Holly crap! Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by daveadams at 12:11 PM on July 14, 2000