Ok. A bit of full disclosure. I’m on the Weight Watchers, but I have to say, their Plan Manager online e-tool is slick (albeit in Flash so I can’t gleep anything thank-you-very-much), but I just discovered this little easter egg the other day:
So, ignore the fact that I’ve been doing this program for two months and I’ve only NOW gotten past six glasses of water a day. But hey, I got a smiley face — a reward for exploring the interface (Flickr has a lot of these hidden features for advanced users). And so I explored. Yes, you get more smilies for noshing on your fruit and vege. Kawaii! You can also drag and drop items from your favorite (oft snarfed) foods into your Food Tracker (aka: your daily journal). Journaling being a big part of WW, this little e-tool sure makes it far more bearable than doing it with the old pen and paper where you have to tally up your own points using an abacus. It’s like the bygone days when TVs only had four channels and you had to get off your butt to change the program. But did you get a cute smiley face if you successfully accomplished that? No. No, you did not.
January 10th, 2008
Please tell you what do I think? How frakkin’ fun, Postreach (not crazy-wild about your biz name though).
I’m a sucker for bubbly graphics with little interactions that occur on mouseover. This comment widget slides down with a nice visual movie effect at the end of the downward slide (watch it go, it’s as though its edge were made of rubber and it slightly bounces back up when it hits bottom - nice touch). I appreciate those fine touches that visually show the user that yes, this object will expand and boooing! – now it’s gone as far as it’s going to.
Do notice the cute little pop-ups calling out the selection options such as “cool”, “fun”, or “insightful”. Honestly, it’s the animation on this widget that makes me want to click. The illustration itself leaves a little to be desired (as in I desire that someone clue me in as to what the second item is which denotes “fun” according to the pop-up. Looks like a monitor displaying the blue screen of death to me — clearly, not fun.) Plus, at first glance, it appears that Postreach’s little man-boy icon is looking kind of dumb with his finger and his thumb in the shape of an “L” on his forehead.
Still, it’s cute enough for me to give the WP widget a go.
January 8th, 2008