Two Slashes

I’ll admit:  Skittles rank pretty high on my list of treats.    I’ve been known to cough up a few dollars at a time for those colorful candies without too much thought about what they might be using that money for.  After being directed to their “new website” today via Twitter (thanks to Keri from Curious Cloud), I have since been considering a boycott. Why?

This is what you get greeted with when you first visit the new Skittles website. It's quite the warm welcome, isn't it?

Frankly, you should take a look for yourself so you can get a thorough firsthand experience of the horror, but to save you the torture, I’ll cover it with as much detail as possible.  Essentially, your first visit to the “redesigned” Skittles.com website requires you to fill out a form stating that you’re of an appropriate age (which they don’t explicitly state) and that you agree that you can’t hold Skittles responsible for anything you see.  Wait, what?

Getting past the age request (or, amusingly enough, looking to what’s behind it, as it loads in the background before you confirm that you’ve agreed to Skittles’ usage policy), you notice that you’ve been brought to Twitter’s search portal, where (of course) “Skittles” has been pre-entered for your enjoyment and there’s a floating Flash movie in the corner for you to use for navigation.  Flipping through the various options on the top of the panel, you quickly find out that the only reason Skittles.com seems to exist anymore is as a quick access station for Twitter (Home and Chatter pages), Facebook (Friends page), Wikipedia (Product Information page), Flickr (Media page), and YouTube (Media page).

And although I typically tend to blow by the idea myself without consideration (though I might have a little more of an excuse than a company), I don’t think the site design offers itself well to people with disabilities.  As I recall, Flash doesn’t cooperate well with screen readers, and the fact that the website is more or less a terrible mashup of every major social media platform with extra navigation doesn’t do too much to suggest they’ve taken this into consideration themselves.

No offense to Mars, Inc., but I can just as easily go to Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, Flickr, or YouTube without any help from you (or that annoying Flash panel).  In my opinion, what they’ve done feels tacky, and I can’t help but make the assumption that someone’s cousin’s friend’s son got paid for this mess.  (“Bueller?”)  For future reference, here’s a hint:  When you’re a multimillion-dollar company, you don’t skimp on your advertising and presence budget.

I wonder how many other people are making the same face that this gentleman and I are sharing.  It’s quite becoming, isn’t it?

You know, there’s something to be said about the feeling when you know you’re going to be handed a pretty big job.  Sure, there’s a lot of work involved, but you also have that big payout at the end to expect too.

Such is the case with an organization that had an idea of where they were going and what they wanted when they contacted me to do some work for them.  After a face-to-face with one of the higher-ups who would be making decisions, I agreed and took on the job.  I put in the work, and even took time out of my day to go to their meetings to present what I had done as progress.  I got feedback and regular communication, and overall things went along more smoothly than I could ever have hoped for; I still don’t think I’ve taken on a job that went together as easily as this one since. (continue reading…)