One Handed GUI

three(very dirty)frames

2009-09-02T17:27:00Z

Everyone was tweeting and forwarding and IMing about threeframes.net yesterday. I spared a few moments to make a few.

But this one is my most very favorite:

Adventures in art direction for porn

2009-08-03T22:57:00Z

Last week I told one of my designers to "Make it more turducken-y" ... as in the imagery should make it appear that the primary subject was being concentrically stuffed.

That is all.

Porn writers are just like us!

2009-06-27T23:09:00Z

I'm sitting in a poorly ventilated ballroom in the basement of The Golden Gateway Hotel (aka the Van Ness Holiday Inn). There's 50 people or so scattered around long white table cloth-covered tables. Conference flyers, mini-menus offering "grab 'n' go breakfasts" and green and white Holiday Inn pens are scattered on every table. The sides of the room are popular, since that's the only place you have a chance of sipping power.

There's a panel of 6 writers at the front of the room sitting at a table edged with a maroon ruffle, sharing 2 microphones and being interviewed by a woman standing off to the side at a podium.

I'm at Cybernet Expo, my first porn industry conference. There are a few less laptops, a few more high end cameras, and one of the panelists is a tranny, but otherwise it could be the IXDA con... but sponsored by extremerestraints.com, nicheshops.com, boyzshop.com, and jenna's love shop.

On the topic of how to pick a good writer, the first 4 panelists agree: You want someone who has a passion for the topic, or the reader will be able to tell. They should know the lingo, and be able to clearly engage the reader.

Thomas Roche disagrees about the need for the writer to be passionate about the specific topic of a project. (paraphrased): as a freelancer, you're probably not going to be into every single thing you have to work on. It's nearly impossible with the diversity of stuff wrt sexualities (and kink.com is mentioned specifically). Luckily that's a core part of any good writer's process: getting into the mind of the person who is excited about it. That's the mark of a professional writer.

Violet Blue echoes Thomas with the (again paraphrased) comment that "to write good sales copy on deadline you need someone who can disengage from the product, know the keywords that will sell, marry that with what the producer is trying to get across. You're bridging the gap between artist and writer." - she also said that when writing catalog copy for Good Vibrations, it wasn't just about technical accuracy of product, clarity of writing about specific sex acts. It was crucial to work in the storefront too, to get close to the end user and thus engage them better.

Sound familiar, designers?

Kink is hosting the end-of-conference party tonight at the castle,which will also mean its my first porn industry party. I'm looking forward to the live shows.

Ciao Kink of Pop

2009-06-25T23:01:00Z

Via The Sword, Wolf Hudson's naked Michael Jackson dance

Credit where credit is due...

2009-06-25T20:10:00Z

A twitter comment made by Bryce Glass inspired the name for this blog and tiwtter persona. He's one of the most innovative and funny designers I've ever had the pleasure of working with.

Open up Pandora's OTHER box

2009-06-25T17:17:00Z

We just launched a new site named Everything Butt.

As I mentioned before, when we do a site, we don't just create the site - we also create dozens and dozens of standard IAB-ish sized ad units to give to our affiliates who drive traffic to us.

Sidebar: Actually, is there a PORN advertising bureau? I've poked around a bit but haven't seen anything specific. Porn companies play it srsly close to the vest. Why not have a list of standard ad units used in porn. When our sales guys talk to affiliates, they ask the same set of questions, and send us the same list of requirements:
dimensions
DL weight limits
animated or not
softcore or hardcore
who its for (which usually dictates one or more of the above)
which of our sites we're advertising in the banner
As porn designers, we should create a set of recognizable standards. IAB has an LREC and the WIDE SKY - perhaps we should have the same... like the Fat Animated Gay - FAG Unit for short: 300x250 hardcore M/M... or the TeenyTittyTwister Unit: 90x120, softcore, animated, M/G/G

Anyway... as part of the creative process, we generate a bunch of one liners for use with our banners. Here's a small sample of what we came up with for our new ass fetish site. Some did and some did NOT make it past the cut:

Fill up your plate at the all you can eat ass buffet
Pluck these anal cherries
Our anal cherry pickers harvest the sweetest fruit
life is short... stop and sniff the rosebuds
An enema a day keeps the... (we couldn't close the deal on this one, since we also do some medical fetish stuff)
Welcome to the RUMPus room (boo)
Browse our anal bazaar
Subscribe to the the anal annals
Ride along with the pirates as they plunder the puckered booty
Sail the seas of sleaze (um)
Come in through our back door
Get your back door key today
Servants enter in the rear
Tailgate party
Tailgating is encouraged
Tailgaters will receive a ticket for anal violations
Business in the front, party in the back
Pussy in the front, party in the rear
Back door Betty bum blasted with big beads
Extreme anal sports / Ass-olympics / analympics
"Grab your ass, I'm going in..." (It was funny when we came up with it)
Anal virgins get their puckers groomed at the Back Snatch Beauty Parlor by certified ass-theticians
Where no pucker goes unprobed
Open up Pandora's OTHER box (we LOVED this one, but thought it might be a wee bit intellectual)
The kitchen sink is not off limits
Reach into the anal grab bag
"Ass... the final frontier" (1. not true, and 2. we love Majel Barret too much to give her a dirty sanchez of copyright copyright violation)
"Fisting... where no hand has gone before" (see above)
BEND OVER... I'LL DRIVE!

Driving Miss Boobsy

2009-06-25T04:15:00Z

Today I was smoking a cigarette on the front steps. One of our models was pacing around and poking her phone in an irritated fashion. I asked her what was wrong. "I've called for a cab three times. It's 20 minutes late and I need to be at my doctor in about 5 minutes." Me: "I can take you. I'm not busy."

So we get in my car and drive downtown to her doctor's office. On the way she volunteers that she's getting the stitches taken out of her shiny new boobies.

Update: After she fully returned to work, I gotta say she definitely grew a nice pair.

I didn't know girls could do that

2009-06-25T04:14:00Z

I saw my first female ejaculation today. Make that two, from the same girl within about 90 seconds. This was at a live audience shoot for Ultimate Surrender. I'm glad I was in the second row. It was like Sea World, but with way more ass fucking.

Random Design Exclamation

2009-06-25T04:13:00Z

Designer, creating a banner ad to promote one of our gay sites: "This guy's dick is too big to fit in the banner!"

This is, of course, an entirely legitimate design issue.

A Random UI Fix Meeting

2009-06-25T04:10:00Z

There's a bunch of small but high impact UI experiences that can be made better on our network of sites. Happily, they're built on a platform, so an improvement on a particular area of one site benefits the same area on all other sites. Magic.

One of the directors came to be to point out an area that was particularly irritating to him, and I agreed it was a problem that could be fixed relatively easily. I threw some quick ideas together and asked to present to him some other interested parties to take a look at the concepts I did.

The director was a few minutes late because he was just wrapping up a shoot. He finally arrived so I reached over to shake his hand. He wrapped his hand underneath his t-shirt and reached back, saying "Sorry, I just finished up and still have girl on me."

After our meeting I ran to the restroom to wash my hands. The soap in the dispensers smells like lime and has grit in it like Lava. I suspect this stuff works wonders on J-lube.

Site launch for pissing.com

2009-06-25T04:03:00Z

So after getting settled into my new job as the director of user experience for the willy wonka of fetish porn, I get to go to my first site launch kickoff meeting.

General site launches are relatively simple. The director has a creative process, books models, assigns a crew, and they make content. After there's a certain amount of content, post production hands over a bunch of images to the design team which are used to create an appropriate site header, palette, and crank out a ton of banners and image galleries used by our sales team and affiliates to promote the site, which in this case is all about watersports. The technology team builds the site template, and our content management system pours it all in. No big whoop.

The kickoff was just to get the right folks in the room to meet and greet, agree on the dates, find out if there're any special requests, try to generally interview the director about concept, etc.

Question: Do we have still images, or will the photo editors create them by taking screen grabs?

Answer: We have them. But we could just have PAs around taking pictures when we have to stop to wipe piss out of a girl's eyes, or mop up the floor or whatever. God, one of them peed on me in our last shoot.

Question [from copywriter]: How "hardcore" is this site? Is it just pissing, or is there fucking, bondage, or other stuff too?

Answer: Sometimes there's blowjobs too. And sometimes there's fucking. There will always be piss. Actually, we have ____ ____ lined up who wants to get her pussy filled with piss then spray it out. And in one of our shoots ____ _____ has her pussy spread wide open and ___ pisses all over it. And sometimes there's two girls or two guys pissing on one girl, or one guy pissing on a girl, or two girls pissing on each other. It just depends. There will always be piss.

Side conversation on appropriate sales text/site taglines: There will always be piss. Let them eat piss. All your piss are belong to us.

Question: Do only the tops piss, or do the bottoms piss too?

Answer: The bottom usually pisses on herself too.

Question: Do you want a title sequence?

Answer: I want a toilet with a woman's face superimposed on it, then the toilet gets flushed and her head spins around and goes down the tube. Wouldn't that be awesome?

Rhetorical question: Have you had thoughts on the site palette?

Rhetorical answer: Yellow.

Question: How long are the videos?

Answer: 20+ minutes. I mean, after twenty minutes of pissing, what more can you do? They might be able to keep going after that I guess.

As the meeting broke I smiled at our director and said "I'm really looking forward to making a big splash with you." har har.

I may or may not be into none, some, or all of the fetishes our site makes. I'm not actually shocked or disgusted by any of the stuff we do vis a vis the context of playing with one or more people for the express purpose of not pro-creating. I love all the weird stuff people like to do to each other.

But, it was extremely titillating to have this conversation in the context of a conference room while a blasé mix of techies, creatives, borderline hipsters, etc. sit around as the director cum dominatrix cum starlet sat on one side of the table in a lumpy sweatshirt and jeans wolfing down burrito the size of her head and talked about pussies being manipulated, hosed down, filled, etc. I had to bite back several giggles and at least two "oh my stars and garters." I'm sure I'll get used to it. Eventually.

Welcome to my NSFW job!

2009-06-25T02:00:00Z

I've decided to fire up a secondary domain, persona, online presence etc. so I can relate some of the funnier/weirder shit about my life without freaking out some of my friends who may not be so interested in this phase of my professional career... that of Director of User Experience at Kink.com

Working in porn is blasé and freaky and everything in between every day:

I have a 401k plan. With company match.
I see naked people nearly every day. (I mean naked people I'm not actually fucking.)
I have been the lead designer for major advertising and rebranding campaigns for Fortune 50 companies on down.
I get to try to figure out how to do contextual inquiry on users who are masturbating with a buttplug the size of a fire hydrant in his or her ass or pussy.
I am an interaction designer by trade.
I have heard of (though not personally seen) a model going to the emergency room because she had a piece of ginger break off in her butthole (as part of an act called "figging" for the very curious.)
I need someone with higher math skills to help me segment my user base by multiple gender identities, sexual identities, and sexual roles many of which shift on a continuous basis.
I read Tufte.
I also read the Manhunt blog.
I have worked in corporate. A lot.
The guest chair in my office is called a Monkey Rocker. You attach a dildo to a platform underneath the split seat then rock back and forth to penetrate your nether regions.
If you haven't figured it out yet, most of the links you'll see here are entirely NSFW. Unless you work in porn...

Most of the time, it's just a job. Every once in awhile though, I have an out of body experience. I'm an eye in the sky, looking down on myself. I'm standing in front of a whiteboard leading a copywriting brainstorm, urging everyone to stay on task and come up with just 5 more different ways to say THROBBING BUTTHOLE or GUSHING PUSSY.

And I start laughing.

I'll use this space to share stories like this. I want to share with everyone, but extend a special invitation to those who work in porn, as a designer, technologist, or other bits of support staff.

Xoxo.