Learn by example, good or bad.
[ Posted by Dan on February 01, 2002 | 0 Comments ]

This will be old news to some people, but it's worth bringing up again...

Christina Wodke is working on a new site called badpractices.com that will be some sort of websites-that-suck archive with an eye towards bad usability, bad interface and bad Info Architecture. Since Christina's site is in Blog format, some people posted their feelings/ideas about the project. In particular, I found the following quote in a post from Nadav important...

"I would personally find goodpractices.com more helpful."

And perhaps he's right, but there is still a ton to gain from examples of bad practices. Personally, I find examples of bad stuff, and why it's bad, to be more helpful. Now, Mark Twain has been attributed the following quote...

"Good decisions come from experience, experience comes from bad decisions"

...and I tend to agree. It seems to me that being told what is good or 'correct' doesn't help creativity. It tends to narrow things down by offering the proven and easy path. Having an open ended path suggested by things to avoid keeps the creative door open to new solutions.

 

Comment posting has been turned off because I don't have enough time and will to deal with the constant comment spamming. I'm very sorry and will fix this sometime soon (soon = before 2004 ends).