Featured Review: Guinness Ad Archive
There are not many beers as well known internationally as Ireland's Guinness Draught. Perhaps it is the rich, unique taste or possibly their book of records that makes the Guinness so well known, or it could be Guinness's 70 plus years of advertising materials that they've archived on their site. Whatever the reason may be - the brew masters for the Guinness web site might want to take a break from the ever flowing beer taps and concentrate on interaction design for a change.

Read and comment on the full Featured Review here.

Featured Review: World Record Attempt for Smart use of Flash
After yesterday's brush with bourbon I thought I'd try to find a site that uses Flash and HTML in a user-friendly manner. The site I found is Guinnessrecords.com - the official site of the Guinness Book of World Records. The site is an amazingly well integrated blend of Flash and HTML and the developers have done a great job focusing on the user in the design.

Read and comment on the full Featured Review here.

Featured Review: Fighting Cock Bourbon needs to Flash Responsibly
I've said before that Flash is like an alcoholic beverage and just like any other alcohol overindulgence can lead to poor performance. The website for Fighting Cock Bourbon is a good example of what can go wrong when developers spend too much time drinking from the capabilities of Flash and not thinking about their users. Taking a look at the content of the site makes me wonder just why Flash was used in the first place. Well actually it's pretty obvious, Flash was used to "really give the site visitors a taste of something different," - or that's what they say on the timeline. Unfortunately the taste is a bitter one of confusing interactions and pointless content.

Read and comment on the full Featured Review here.

Featured Review: American Museum of Natural History Interactive Map
I'm doing some research into using Flash to display interactive floor plans today and I happened onto this interactive map of the American Museum of Natural History in NYC. There are a couple of issues that I wanted to highlight about this map, and the way that the AMNH site integrates it on their site.

Read and comment on the full Featured Review here.

Featured Review: Pig-Skin Navigation in Flash
Today I got an email asking for my impression of the Baltimore Raven's Flash menu (take a look here). In addition to taking a look at the Raven's site, I also looked at all the NFL team home pages to see how Flash was being used for navigation.

Read and comment on the full Featured Review here.

Featured Review: Ensenda Delivers message with Flash
Ensenda, an IT company specializing in one-hour delivery management, implements Flash with style on its web site. Targeting Flash's strengths in animation, sound and interactions, Ensenda delivers its message clearly with a good deal of impact to its visitors. There are few usability issues with the interface, but overall, this site uses Flash better than the vast majority of all-Flash web sites.

Read and comment on the full Featured Review here.

Flash: The User's Best Friend?
Last week I got an interesting request for a Featured Review on Flazoom.com. Macromedian Mike Chambers asked me to take a look at Macromedia's proof-of-concept Pet Market application and review it for usability concerns.

Macromedia and the design firm Popular Front have crafted a very elegant interface for the Pet Market application that extends the user's interactions past what is normally expected on the Internet. Overall, the Pet Market application is a great example of how Flash can improve the user's experience on the web.

Read the full text of the review here.

Featured Review: Pointless Flash made worse at UMAX.com
The use of Flash to provide the site navigation at UMAX.com is possibly the worst use of Flash that I have ever seen from a corporate site. The menu is a shining example of how Flash should not be used. The SWF file is large, the menu buttons move and there really is no justifiable reason to include the menu as a Flash element on the page.

Read and comment on the full Featured Review here.

Featured Review: Diamond site Clouded with Poor Usability
The Flash site of a diamond retailer should not suffer from issues like color, cut, clarity and wait. Kwiat, a diamond jeweler in New York City, has a new Flash site that suffers from those exact issues. The site is an excellent example of how a very nice design suffers from usability issues.

Read and comment on the full Featured Review here.

Featured Review: Making the Simple Complex
Question: What is the worst interaction for users to select from a list of fifteen products?
Answer: Sony's Connect and Create site.

The Sony Connect and Create site has a fairly simple purpose; it lets users see how much they can save when buying Sony products. With such humble aspirations for a site, I have to wonder what happened? The site is has collected some of the worst interactions available and bundled them together to offer little more than confusion and frustration for the user.

Read and comment on the full Featured Review here.

Featured Review: Offering Help to Users
SquareEyeDesign needs help. Not design help, the design of their site is very slick. Not programming/ActionScripting help either, they seem to have a handle on that too. The type of help I am talking about is help for the user, and fortunately for us, SquareEye offers that.

Read and comment on the full Featured Review here.

Featured Review: Toptronic Falls Short on Usability
Attention Flash developers, copying the style of 2Advanced is not a methodology for building a successful web site. I could believe it if your company was a design shop, but for a company like Toptronics that provides network solutions an all Flash site with little attention to usability is not going to help you win contracts.

Read and comment on the full Featured Review here.