During business hours my son Yuri is animator, but at night he turns into an indie musician. I like his music a lot. He recorded and published online a bunch of new songs and created a Flash Web site where you can listen to them for free: http://thisismybootleg.com/.

When he sent me this link, and ten clicks later I felt irritated. I didn ‘t know where should I click to get to this freaking music player. OK, I could ask the Web designer/animator directly, and he showed me where to click, but what about the other people?

I was arguing that such design is against the rules – it should be as intuitive to the end user as possible. Yuri responded, that he uses this rule while designing animation for commercial sites, but this site is for YOUNG people who don ‘t mind doing a little bit of an exploration on Web sites and would find the hot spot sooner or later.

I ‘m not a designer, but I know that people like self explanatory things. Any electronic widget that comes with a thick user manual makes me want to run away. Remember these toys in the Toys ‘R ‘Us with the large button “Click me “? This is it. No thinking required, or else..

After my 5-min lecture Yuri made it just a tiny bit more user friendly (or did he?).

So I ‘d love to hear your opinion – am I just an old fashioned grumpy corporate Web developer who doesn ‘t understand the latest hip trends, or this design is flawed?

BTW, if you will be able to find some secret spot on the screen that would let fan girls or recording labels contact my extremely indie musician, please leave a comment to this blog or send an email directly to Yuri via his main and better designed site: http://yurifain.com/ .