As a developer, I've known for some time now that my design skills are not exactly "professional level". Let me be honest - I typically walk past my wife in the morning to ensure I dressed in something that isn't too horrible. But while I may not be able to design my way out of a paper bag - I think I recognize good design. A perfect example of this came up this week. My city (Lafayette, LA), will soon be offering fiber to the home, much sooner than our local cable and phone company. (And trust me, they put up quite a fight, but that's another story.) They recently rolled out a Flash based map to show what areas would first be getting fiber service. You can see the map here.

Try to use that map. Go ahead. I'll wait. Even better - try to read the map. While the UI isn't too complex, the actual data - the maps - are near impossible to use. I've been in Lafayette for about 5 years, but after 10 minutes of trying to find my home, I simply gave up.

I made a comment to this effect on the Lafayette Pro Fiber Blog, a web site run by local supporters of the fiber initiative in our city. (As I said - it was a bit of a fight.) They were quickly able to employ Google's mapping service to make a much better result. Same data really - but the presentation is incredibly more easy to read. For me it probably just comes down to having additional zoom levels, but that one feature alone allowed me to find my street (unfortunately I'm not in the first roll out) in about 30 seconds!

So again - I don't pretend to be a great designer - but I think this a great set of examples on how one RIA can be much more usable than another.