Navigate
Topics
- Design
- Flavors of the One Love
- Humans
- Information Architecture
- Politics
- Science
- Technology
- The Kitchen Table
The Asilomar Institute is dedicated to advancing and promoting information architecture.
Copyright 1992-2004 Victor Lombardi
Cost and Style
My post on eBay-as-Flea Market received a bit of attention, including -- judging by the referers -- some folks from eBay. Later discussions with Tanya and Owen refined these ideas a bit, namely:
- I was a bit sloppy in my use of the word design. eBay's design works, though the style of the site -- by reflecting the home-spun vernacular of sellers -- can be low style
- Low style is not the same as clean style or bad style. Low is the vernacular, clean can be a default look, and bad actually works against the design. Someone somewhere probably has expressed this better with different terms, but lacking that knowledge I'm running with it.
- Low style and low cost -- giving the perception of a Flea Market -- can be good. These are not value judgments, but judgments of value.
- Organization and classification is often secondary to other factors that communicate value, such as style and cost.
And so on. The interplay of style and cost most interested me, so I created a little matrix with pretty pictures:
It's a bit rough, but could turn into a fun little tool to clarify product design and marketing ('Which quadrant are you in? They'll all good, but different.'). Might be nice to create a book of them, including ye ol' value-complexity matrix.
Tuesday, March 23, 2004 | Permalink | Filed in Psychology