3 ms·

Dear god. Who is it that thinks these crazy visualizations add any kind of value to whatever message they're trying to communicate?

evenwestvang 12y ago
Hm, me for one. Would you care to elaborate on your exasperation?
- gone35 12y ago
  (Not the parent but) If I may, The key point is that communication is expensive[1]. And not just because bandwidth is physically expensive, or the opportunity costs of waiting about, or the usability nightmares that inevitably ensue; but also because decoding itself is mentally taxing. And every panache adds up to it. So it better be worth to the recipient. So when you double-down like you did, Flash-era intros and all; and it turns out all there is to it is a sparse bunch of unnavigable, decontextualized[2], tweet-sized digests of a policymakers' digest; and on top you can't even turn the damn globe on your own to explore the simulation results yourself (arguably the sole reason to be using WebGL at all!); then... well, I hope you see why your site would be so exasperating. [1] http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/shannon1948.pdf http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/shannon1948.pd... [2] Pro tip: leaving uncertainty terms to the 'for climate nerds' section is borderline unethical.
egeozcan 12y ago
People with "we should make it this complicated because we can" attitude. In other words, people who'd rather show off their skills instead of solving a problem. This hurts the users because they have to spend more time/effort, it hurts the cause/business because some users just give up, and it hurts the reputation of the web design profession because people then associate them with complex solutions which is definitely not the outcome they are (or, should be) aiming for. I'm not the authority on this subject but my idea is that the designers are more successful when they can present very complicated information in a more basic way without sacrificing usability. The problem could be getting paid by the complexity of the outcome, rather than the utility. Just a guess.

evenwestvang 12y ago

Hm, me for one. Would you care to elaborate on your exasperation?

gone35 12y ago
(Not the parent but) If I may, The key point is that communication is expensive[1]. And not just because bandwidth is physically expensive, or the opportunity costs of waiting about, or the usability nightmares that inevitably ensue; but also because decoding itself is mentally taxing. And every panache adds up to it. So it better be worth to the recipient. So when you double-down like you did, Flash-era intros and all; and it turns out all there is to it is a sparse bunch of unnavigable, decontextualized[2], tweet-sized digests of a policymakers' digest; and on top you can't even turn the damn globe on your own to explore the simulation results yourself (arguably the sole reason to be using WebGL at all!); then... well, I hope you see why your site would be so exasperating. [1] http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/shannon1948.pdf http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/shannon1948.pd... [2] Pro tip: leaving uncertainty terms to the 'for climate nerds' section is borderline unethical.

egeozcan 12y ago

People with "we should make it this complicated because we can" attitude. In other words, people who'd rather show off their skills instead of solving a problem. This hurts the users because they have to spend more time/effort, it hurts the cause/business because some users just give up, and it hurts the reputation of the web design profession because people then associate them with complex solutions which is definitely not the outcome they are (or, should be) aiming for. I'm not the authority on this subject but my idea is that the designers are more successful when they can present very complicated information in a more basic way without sacrificing usability. The problem could be getting paid by the complexity of the outcome, rather than the utility. Just a guess.