or at least for an alertbox: DVD Menu Design (guest column by Don Norman, Alertbox Dec. 2001)

It's actually refreshing to hear Don's gentle informal voice. Jakob and Don's writing styles are quite alike, yet the tone is very different. Don has a breezy quality-- you half expect he's sitting in your living room with you, explaining why the thing works or doesn't from the couch. Jakob is the graduate teacher you've run into in the hallways between classes, and while he's also human enough to tell anecdotes, he's also always on the job.

Anyhow, good column. DVD design is clearly a messy new field, and opportunities for good interaction designers and UI designers shall abound. Scroll down to his six tips, at least.

I have not been able to figure how DVD menus/screen designs have become less usable over the last two years. Navigating with up and down arrows and no mouse is a mess with DVDs. The links to menus are often poorly named. It is a movie and I would like to watch it, why make it an obscure practice? (Arg, I am sounding old.)

The DN piece was a good read and echoed my frustrations.

I agree with his points about consistency in DVD navigation (onCursorOver vs onCursorClick).

I don't agree with his characterization of the Memento interface. He confuses a special feature of the DVD (the website) with the actual DVD navigation. One appropriately disorienting, the other appropriately clear.

For terrible DVD designs, The Last Temptation of Christ ranks up there with the worst. No categorization - just a dump of all the content into a centered list on the front menu. So bad.

All I can think of is that it's a ripe opportunity for experience designers to get into the market for crafting DVD menu screens...and hotel tv menu screens.

thanks, lol?!

I think a dump is the best design

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