Author: Dan Rubin

• Blog
  Survey: Expectations of Privacy and Accountability Fernanda
  Viégas — MIT Media Lab
• Turning
  Energy into Pretty Things Kristen
  Philipkoski — Wired
• 
  Interview with Douglas Bowman
  Craig Saila — Digital Web Magazine
• The
  Joy of Navigation Design Peter
  Merholz — peterme.com
• Design
  Trends Veerle
  Pieters — Veerle’s blog
• Visual
  Differentiators Dan
  Saffer — What I’m Studying (odannyboy.com)
• Application
  Archetypes Microsoft
  User Experience Group — MSDN
• An Open Letter to Jakob
  Nielsen Andrei
  Herasimchuk — Design by Fire
• Version 2 Redesign Contest:
  February Winner Paul
  Scrivens — Whitespace

• Do
  Extranets Dilute Your Users Experience? Open
  Discussion — CHI-WEB
• Search
  Upstarts Storm Google’s Gates Stefanie
  Olsen — CNET News.com
• Lifeblog:
  Nokia’s Total Experience Application
  Red Herring Blog
• You
  Want Me to Put My Shoes Where? Harvey
  Molotch — NY Times
• SXSW 2004
  Dave
  Shea — mezzoblue.com
• Redesign
  Case Study Keith
  Robinson — Asterisk*

• Warning:
  Blogs Can Be Infectious Amit
  Asaravala — Wired
• What We
  Learned In The New Economy Jennifer
  Reingold — FastCompany
• Interface Design Issues
  #05: A Plethora of Design Problems Andrei
  Herasimchuk — Design by Fire
• Version
  2: February Entries Paul
  Scrivens — Whitespace
• Small Business IA & Usability
  Dinos
  Papoulias — ia/ blogs
• Semantic Web
  Interest Group Kendall
  Clark — XML.com
• How
  Media Changes Cultural Identities Henry
  Jenkins – MIT Technology Review
• A
  Recipe for Learning Web Design Keith
  Robinson — Digital Web Magazine

Let me tell you a little story. It’s about a client who decided to end a project early, before all the work was completed, so they could take control of the finished product. All work was paid for, as-per the contract, so no complaints, right?

Wrong.

Almost four months after handing over the project files to their IT department, along with clear instructions (not that many were needed, since the layout and markup were fairly straightforward, as was the CSS), we receive an email letting us know the site was finally live. “Terrific!” we thought, “Now we can link to it and show off some more recent work!” Then we clicked the link.

Horror. Disbelief. Shock. Page after page, bastardized–results Dr. Frankenstein would be proud of. A monstrosity wrought not on the operating table, but within Adobe GoLive, and at the hands of what can only be assumed is a madman (or even worse: an entire team of madmen).

Gaze in horrified wonder at the accessibility statement, rendered false by the mangling of markup and navigation. Stare with morbid fascination at the once text-based navigation now rendered as images. Run crying from the room when you see the body text, once styled and pure, now stark naked and barren.

Is this a work of fiction? Sadly, no: you can view the ghastly reality right here.

“But wait!” you scream! “What did the original, unfinished site look like before it was rendered helpless by these monsters?” Well children, I’ll show you…just peek behind this velvet curtain…

As we grieve for our loss, it would make us feel better if someone, anyone would share with us their stories of similar atrocities and client-committed crimes against design, so we might find some comfort.

Note: the image below was posted as a bit of an experiment, with tongue firmly planted in cheek, following a brief Photoshop skirmish between Didier and me. While no one has complained, I have one thing to say just in case: Zeldman, please don’t kill us ;-)