[thelist] Inspiration source?

[Christian Heilmann]

> I tend to resort to anything OTHER than websites for inspiration. I used
> to collect all sorts of found objects, scraps of junk I'd find in the
> street, clothing tags, discarded signage; tear out pages from magazines;
> take photos of all sorts of objects, pretty much anything you could
> juxtapose against another object can be inspiration.
>
> I would make found object collages and keep scrapbooks full of stuff
> like that, all jumbled together. Those still provide lots of
> inspiration, even though most were made 10-15 years ago.

And if you are ever cold and your partner just kicked you out of the
house you can also sleep under them! :-)

How come nobody mentioned drugs yet? It surely has worked for Vincent Flanders:
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/

He takes the other approach: Learn good practices by looking at bad
sites, which is a bit pointing the finger but it really is a good idea
if you do it in a roundabout way:
Ask people using web sites that are in the same area as the one you
want to create and what annoys them, then avoid that or replace it by
something they liked.

For example if you were to create a travel site, make sure you test
the availability of flights BEFORE you show them in the search
results. I just spent an hour trying to find a flight getting stuck
repeatedly at the last step of the ordering process at Expedia. It
told me the flight is not available, and when I started a new search,
voila - it was there again. Opodo is better, they don't offer you to
search again and ask you to call their rather expensive hotline
instead, who then tell you that they can find the same flight you just
weren't able to book and if you don't want to try that one...