When I hear people tell me:
“What camera should I get to take better pictures?”
Or:
“How do people find the time to write?”
Or my personal favorite:
“If I only had the time…”
It drives me crazy. These are all just essentially excuses for the same problem. Just do it already.
An old PDD article I wrote got posted up on Wireframes Magazine.
It might as well be paper or plastic. You step up to the cash register and the checker looks up and asks, “Paper or Plastic?”. If you’re like me, you start over-thinking the question. I’d like to avoid using petroleum products so I should go with paper, but those actually take more energy to produce, but I can use them for my recycling later… Meh, I should just buy some reusable bags and get it over with.
The same types of questions pop into my head when people ask if they should use tags or categories. Tags are easy and quick to add, but they lack the structure and navigability that categories provide. But then, it’s tough to decide which category certain content types belong in.
After far too much internal debate, waffling, and discussion, I know there isn’t one solution I can say is best. But there are a few solid rules you can defer to when thinking about tags and categories, and there’s one solution that I like to use for most of the sites I design.
“This portion of moby.com, ‘film music’, is for independent and non-profit filmmakers, film students, and anyone in need of free music for their independent, non-profit film, video, or short.” Slick.
Great thoughts on from Mark Boulton that’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.