Critics Claim Whitney Gets Sloppy, Audi Babbles

A couple of web critiques to start your day off both a bit more reasoned and maybe more cranky. First up, by way of a tip, comes Perry Garvin‘s review of the Whitney Museum‘s new site redesign. We’d seen it when it launched a little while back, and played with it here and there, but hadn’t really paid too too much attention. Certainly not with an overly critical eye. Garvin does the exact opposite, digging in to the user experience on the site and finding some seemingly very big flaws, claiming it to be far worse than what it replaced. “Visual confusion, counter-intuitive navigation, and illogical organization put it on par with its predecessor but setting it a step backwards is an absence of a compelling design that knits the site together into a coherent whole,” he says. There are some strong arguments and examples in there, and while the Whitney’s design team might not agree with some, we certainly hope some of the review makes its way to them. Second, and more funny, comes TG Daily‘s Andrew Thomas‘ commentary about auto company Audi‘s recent foray into “social media,” wherein they requested that regular people help design a car to be released 29 years in the future, called the YouthMobile 2030 program. Although we think that Thomas takes the whole thing a bit too seriously, as the company was clearly running the program as a way to both give the brand some warm, fuzziness while also trying to foster young people’s interest in design, not actually build anything because of it, he does pull out some of the program’s copy and links this unbearable video, wherein Audi uses far too many empty buzzwords and jargon (if “…enabled seamless communication through a host of channels including messaging and social networking integration via mobile broadband” doesn’t make you want to turn off your computer right now, then you’re likely one of the people who writes such things) and generally continues to make anything connected to “social media” feel like internet leprosy. But that’s enough negativity for one day. On to the positive!

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