What Were They Thinking? — Mirror Mirror on the Mirror Mirror on the Mirror Mirror on the Phone

“What Were They Thinking?” highlights products and presentations which just don’t make sense.

Check out this screenshot from the music player on a not-yet-released phone.  (That’s a perk of my job, getting to test our software interactions with unreleased devices.  So no, I’m not going to tell you who the phone is by, but Verizon is their carrier.)

Apparently, it isn’t enough to just show the album art.  No, you have to make it way cooler than that:

1. You  put a border around it
2. Then you create a reflection of the art and border
3. Then you put a border around the art/border/reflection combo
4. Then you reflect that
5. And then you put a trendy fake reflection glare across the whole thing (which mostly serves to just obscure the art)

They could have saved processing resources and given the user bigger art if they just did art and maybe its reflection.  And no one would have ever wished for more.

Apologies to country artists Caitlin & Will who get caught up in this example.  (Then again, the duo broke up in late 2009 after releasing one single and having their album pulled.  Sigh.)  But here, go listen to some music from them.