Design by Fire
Reality TV is one of my guilty pleasures, often because it’s so bad that it’s good, if you know what I mean. One of the best for being the worst was American Inventor, where contestant brought in their ideas for inventions that were refined and eliminated in rounds of voting.
Blogger Phil Ryu has launched a website for designing the next great Mac app through the same model: ideas will be submitted, voted on by a panel of established Mac developers, and eliminated through five weeks of voting on My Dream App (www.mydreamapp.com). The goal, to find real gems of ideas for cool apps, and to guide them to the 1.0 release. The panelists are made up of recognizable names Mac development, tech journalism and blogging, and I hope the advice they can give will be a boost to aspiring designers.
I think Phil’s idea is an interesting one, but the cuteness of the American Idol parallels end up sabotaging the potential. What sours me is the premise that there can ultimately be only one winner, a model that requires elimination for the sake of elimination, rather than a real building of potential. It also precludes the notion of two or more projects merging in the course of the contest as a part of the process, which in the fledgling age of the mashup is an idea that should only be encouraged, not discouraged by pure competition.
An amusing side note: in the forums one person complained about the 500 character limit for submitting an idea description and asked for more space. The response?
…the 500 character limit won’t change. It’s our belief that any great app can be described in 500 characters, and we also can’t judge thousands of page long ideas.
Come on; was it really a substantive decision to decide it in character numbers, like 501 is out but 500 is in? A humane way would be to give a maximum number of words or a suggested range. Better yet, ask for an elevator pitch to start things off and work from there.
All is not lost, of course. This is the prototype, the 1.0, season one of My Dream App, and despite my doubts I’ll definitely be watching.
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