Kurt Leucht’s Blog

Ive been a Woot (woot.com, what is Woot) customer since May of 2006, buying cheap electronics here and there whenever I saw Woot offering something that I really needed. When I subscribed to the Woot RSS feeds (so I wouldnt forget to check the daily sale) I noticed that they were holding weekly Photo-chopping contests there. And they were actually giving away monetary prizes too, or at least monetary credit for purchases on Woot! Ive got a little bit of Photo-chopping experience, so I started keeping my eyes open for a contest theme that I would enjoy working on. Then Woot Contest 174 caught my eye.

The Challenge: Show us how we can get rid of thousands of unsold Sandisk Sansa Media Players.

The idea that immediately came to mind was to use thousands of these cheap little electronic devices to build a supercomputer … or actually a not-so-super-computer.

Here is the Sansa image I used from Woot:

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And here is the super computer image I used from Mississippi State University:

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And here is my contest entry (http://www.woot.com/Forums/ViewPost.aspx?PostID=2265560):

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I spent probably 2 hours on this entry. A pro could have probably done it in 20 minutes, but I’m not that experienced … plus the TV was on while I was working on it. It was fun, though. I especially enjoyed turning the SUN microsystems logo on the side of the rack into Sandisk. I think it turned out rather well.

I didn’t win a monetary prize, but I was honored with an “Honorable Mention” which is worth free shipping on my next Woot purchase. Here are the complete results for Woot Contest 174.

Kurt

I recently saw this sign at the Sanford airport. I knew where I was going when I saw the sign, but the sign actually confused me and made me stop and think about whether I was going the right direction. I knew the mens bathroom was on the left, but the woman/man figures were on the wrong side. I wonder how many people see this sign and actually go into the wrong bathroom because of it.

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Saw this sign in the bathroom at the local convenient store gas station. Not exactly sure what it is trying to say. Employees wearing gloves without thumbs must wash hands?

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As a software programmer, I feel the need to make the user happy so that they will like my product. We all just want to be loved, right? In order to make the user of my software happy, the user interface must not be annoying and the whole user experience must be positive. I personally have lots of opinions about what should and should not be done in a user interface, and I’m sure the whole world will not be totally in agreement with all of my opinions, and that’s fine. We can agree to disagree.

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This would be even more annoying if this were done on a software user interface. But I don’t have any examples of that to post right now. Let’s just try to avoid using buttons as indicators, shall we?

Just my opinion,

Kurt (with a tip of my hat to Joel Spolsky)

As a software programmer, I feel the need to make the user happy so that they will like my product. We all just want to be loved, right? In order to make the user of my software happy, the user interface must not be annoying and the whole user experience must be positive. I personally have lots of opinions about what should and should not be done in a user interface, and I’m sure the whole world will not be totally in agreement with all of my opinions, and that’s fine. We can agree to disagree.

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Just my opinion,

Kurt (with a tip of my hat to Joel Spolsky)