A guest blogpost by Stray.
I’m always nervous of success. It creates expectations.
So while I was thrilled when the Black Boxes widget went viral in 2008 - gathering tens of thousands of users and questions in days - I was also slightly dreading the day when Cas would tweet me ‘Can you do a widget for Like Bees to Honey?’
For geeky folk like me, writing the code to make it work is not the difficult part. Creating the experience is simple in comparison with imagining the experience that you want to create. An experience that people will want to come back to again and again, and that they will want to share with others.
The Like Bees to Honey Hive and the Widget are an experiment that builds on what people told us they valued about the Black Boxes widget. Above all, we’ve kept the theme of connecting people together.
We’ll write more about the thinking behind the widget and the hive over the next week or two, but don’t want to spoil the magic by giving away too much before you’ve all had a chance to play.
There aren’t many instructions - it’s yours to explore. You can find out everything you need to know, and join in, on The Hive page.
p.s. - You can find the Black Boxes widget in the bottom right corner of the Black Boxes page.
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Looks great - but stray, (I’m not embarrassed to be exposed as not very clever here), it’s not clear to me how you actually create a bee?
Hi trousers, I’m pretty sure that the problem is that you don’t have flash player 10.
You can update your flashplayer here: http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/?promoid=BUIGP
Twitter: @stray_and_rubyThanks stray - I posted on here as well as emailed because I wondered if other people might have the same issue - but yes my problem appears to be with flash player.
Stray - you’ve done a wonderfully awesome job. Again!
I love it!
Nik
Twitter: @nikperringLove it, love it, love it…can’t stop playing with it. xo
Twitter: @djkirkbyp.s. it’s on all my blogs.
OMG, the slug blinks! How cute.
Twitter: @djkirkbyOh it’s so cute and fun and gorgeous! Great stuff
(Can I make a teensy point re the hive info/FAQ, though? Flash is very inaccessible for vision-impaired people who use special software to access the internet, which may not be a huge concern for Steve Jobs, but is a bit of a bummer…)
Ps: A big pink one!
Twitter: @dianeshipleyYou’re totally right Diane. Though actually HTML 5 sucks for accessibility worse than flash at the moment. It actually is possible to make many flash things quite accessible (I often do that), but given the time and budget here it wasn’t viable this time.
But we did have a long hard think about it - my stepson is disabled (very severe dyspraxia) and the designer who did the graphics - Badger - also has a disability, having Tourettes and associated communication differences. So - we’re very keen on this accessibility stuff
(And people often forget how much difference it makes to people with autistic spectrum differences just to label things clearly instead of trying to be clever!)
In the end I hope that there will be enough written about it that visually impaired twitter and blogger users will be able to access the questions. We do plan to add a twitter feed for the hive next week which will tweet questions people submit and also ‘answers so far’. We just wanted to roll out one technical aspect at a time as I’m supporting it. Once the little glitches users are having have all been dealt with we’ll integrate the tweeting
And that twitter feed will be screen reader friendly.
From time to time we’ll also blog/tweet the results of selections of questions, so visually impaired users should be able to get the content there too.
Thanks for bringing it up - it’s not something we’ve not thought about, just forgot to say that in the page! I’ll add it there tomorrow.
Twitter: @stray_and_rubyAfter I’d posted, I worried I might come across as a total party pooper… But I’ve found not all designers/webby types/people in the world are interested/invested in accessibility issues. Great idea to add a Twitter feed to the hive, and so refreshing to know you’ve really thought about this
Thanks so much for replying, Stray.
Twitter: @dianeshipleyThanks for your comments, lovely people and a BIG thank you to Stray and Badger. They are 2 of the nicest people in this universe and have been on this journey with me from the beginning. The internet can help to make some very fabulous life-changing connections x
Am totally addicted. Great widget!!
Twitter: @lilysheehan