Ah yes, the old “everything in moderation” phrase. I cannot even begin to tell you how many times I was slapped in the face with this as a child. Maybe it’s because I had a weight problem and had no self control. Thank God times have changed.

So what does this phrase mean to me now that I’m an adult, have graduated from college (twice woot!), and am pursuing a career in HCI? I hate Adobe Flash/Microsoft Silverlight. Well, let me clarify, I certainly don’t HATE them, they have some amazing capabilities, and can truely be used to accomplish some amazing tasks. They can be engaging, interactive, and clean. Additionally, they can be used as fantastic prototyping tools, to display a design while developing a light weight version of the design in parallel.

My problem is the misuse of these technologies, or when companies feel like they are the solution to all of their problems. “We NEED a designer who can do Flash/Silverlight” is perhaps not the best attitude to take into the hiring process when looking for new creative talent.

Now, this is not to say, there aren’t cases where it is best if an entire page is to be made in these tools, however, more often than not, that is not the case. Some examples:

Sert – This site uses Silverlight for EVERTHING. This is a perfect example, where a designer (if they in fact had one, I’ll assume they did), and their superiors (because it is never the fault of a single person), got too caught up in what they COULD do, and didn’t spend enough time thinking about what they SHOULD do. The result? Poor usabulity, frustrating user experience. Probably not a good thing for a site trying to share information about their product to consumers.

GRS – A Korean media group, who has actually done a decent job. This site encorporates DeepZoom in order to display their products and services, but does so in a relatively intuitive nature. Additionally, they don’t let the site navigation interfere. Yet the navigation is still clearly visable, and easy to access.

Work and Witness Guatemala – And here is an example of a site that for whatever reason, thought that using Silverlight would solve all of their issues. As if, “hey! we don’t need to design anything! just throw it out there in Silverlight and magic will happen”. In case you haven’t or aren’t going to click the link, magic did, in fact, not happen. It is to Silverlight, as this would be to designing an html page.

A blog post here at Tech Republic talks about some of the pitfalls of using Flash (which also apply to Silverlight). A good read for anyone looking at what not to do, which is the best place to start really.

The purpose of any site is to express information, whether it is data, visual or audio. People get confused sometimes when I describe my job to them, or attempt to explain what an interaction designer or information architect does. However, the fact of the matter is, our profession is needed much more often than many are willing to admit, until you see the results, then it all makes perfect sense.