This is a surprise: Adobe announced Director 11 – the follow-up release to Director MX 2004. After years of speculation Adobe seems to be committed to develop Director further.
There is a rough comparison chart on the Adobe site which compares Director to Flash. I am not quite convinced the advantages of Director over Flash will set it apart and (re-)create its own market (or re-create its former market). The ubiquity of the Flash plug-in, YouTube & Co, ActionScript 3 and Flex have brought a lot of seriousness to the Flash platform in the past 3-4 years.
Next week Hobnox will launch the first Beta version of the community website. And we will integrate Flash-based tools to manipulate a content library. Here is an appetizer…
Most areas of the site will start out as closed beta and/or demos, but we want to slowly ramp up the features and the design. We have many ideas on the drawing board, but we want the users to participate in the development.
If you live in Berlin there will be a festival on 28th of Februrary (with the nominees from the evolution contest playing). Some performances will be streamed live over the Internet.
There are still many projects online that did not make it to rank 1-3 but are worth a look.
Soon you will be able to log-in, play around and add your own profile and content to the system. You can apply for the closed beta now.
Jason Fried from 37signals argues against the use of Personas.
Personas don’t talk back. Personas can’t answer questions. Personas don’t have opinions. Personas can’t tell you when something just doesn’t feel right.
This is a pretty sketchy definition of what personas are supposed to do as a tool: The foremost reason for personas is to have people from all departments think about their product from a customer perspective and with a mindset that can be shared. Personas are not meant to “talk back” – they are meant to align imagination and create labels for »common thinking«.
It makes a difference if people talk their ideas pretending to be someone else or not. Personas drive positive groupthinking. It also forces to anticipate users. It also makes deriving marketing stories from that easier.
Published on
February 18, 2008 in
Design.