Wednesday, November 17, 2010

The Value of a Cute Interface

Are we more likely to forgive technical glitches that ask forgiveness with a cute picture?

As Twitter struggles to deal with the explosion in activity, its "fail whale" frequently has to be the ambassador-peacemaker for overloaded technology.  This beloved whale has achieved near cult status and has appeared on clothing, in cake format, on mugs and carved into Halloween pumpkins.  An image search on Google showed these neat eternalizations of the whale:
It is clear that "cute" trumps "glitch" and more often techno brands use cutesy imagery to build brand support.  Just think about some of these.... can you name them?