So the election has been announced: bring on a month of frantic baby kissing. You can follow the antics of Michael “something of the night about him” Howard, Tony “lapdog cocking a leg to popular opinion” Blair, and the other chap who’ll come third as they gallivant around the country, in the Guardian Election Blog. Ben has made a pretty impressive job of it as the Blog comes complete with Contemporaria (links to news in other sources at the time of each post) and a Folksonomic Zeitgeist (Flickr-like display of post tags used over the past seven days).
Talking of simple choices, the Marmite website reminded me (via Jeremy) of a site highlighted by Jeff Veen during his SxSW talk on How to inform design. The site in question, by the US Farm Service Agency, is Hay Net and has a wonderfully simple interface that gives visitors just choices: Need Hay and Have Hay. Marmite offers a similar choice: Love It or Hate It.
There was a similar binary interface in Las Manitas Avenue Cafe, a popular Mexican cafe in Austin. The doors to the kitchen operated a one-way system clearly marked above each door as Yes and No (someone at SxSW must have a photo of that, surely?)
Blogging · Information design · War & Politics · SxSW · Flickr
Simon Jessey wrote:
You sound rather disenfranchised, Richard. I must confess that I have lamely failed to register myself as a voter (albeit from over here in the US), so I won’t have a say in this election. Despite being a Democrat over here, I’d be inclined to be a Conservative over there.
paul haine wrote:
Don’t “Need hay” and “Want hay” basically mean the same thing?
Rich wrote:
paul – er, yes. My bad, duly corrected.
darren wrote:
hey rich – I’m pretty agnostic when it comes to elections. I guess you’ve seen the most effective way to seperate the wheat from the chaff (or the hay from the ears) – http://www.whoshouldyouvotefor.com/