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It is better
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John Sumser

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John Gall

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Raging Mouse

(December 12, 2000) We'll give it high marks for rethinking interface design. If you're looking for work while you're still on the clock, no one would guess that's what you're doing. It's targeted. No one without the latest browser and a fair amount of bandwidth will like it.

It's memorable.

Move over Cruel World, meet the Raging Mouse.

(By the way, Cruel World has merged with (or, depending on your rumor source, been taken out of its misery by) Spencer Stuart. Compare the two websites and you'll see that this is a case of a kindly older couple adopting a troubled adolescent with pink hair and lots of piercings. It's a very good thing, really, allowing Spencer Stuart to stay competitive while providing a deeper context for Cruel World's perspective.) At any rate, Cruel World brought the famous elevator riding, briefcase toting prickly groundhog thus opening the door for Raging Mouse.

The site opens with a scene of raining letters in which a cryptic message is eerily displayed:.

Unfortunately no one can tell you what this site is
You have to see it for yourself

A mouse who looks like he was designed by an Anime team, trying to go commercial, offers the first intelligence test. Once the media piece is finished, the mouse (his name must be Skip) has a red orb in his left hand, a blue orb in his right. Somehow, you figure out that you're supposed to click on one of them. Obviously, the red would mean "no" and the blue would mean, well, something else. However, clicking on the blue orb entitles you to watch the raining letters again (a pleasure twice a chore after three). Clicking the red orb takes you to a cartoonish scene with a big piece of Swiss cheese. Mice pop out of the holes in somewhat random order.

You have to figure out what to click (any of the moving mice will do, the ringing phone, headset and perfectly wonderful static mice yield no satisfaction). Once properly clicked, the cheese wheel spins away to become the navigation aids on the right side of the screen. The options are:

Story That We're Sticking to (lame attempt at verbal humor)
Get Me A Job (great search interface)
Find Me A Gal/Guy (no, really, it says that! This screen allows you to send email to the mousetrap!)
Send Us The Goods (submit resume)
Time Wasters (Guess where we went first...in the interests of pure research)
Fuel Tank (where you post jobs)

We love the search interface. While FlipDog wins the high data traffic design hands down, the Raging Mouse design is deliciously fun. Slider Bars, area codes, self correcting same screen notes. For an interface, this is a winner.

But most importantly, we love the time wasters. Cheezearoids, Whack-a-CEO and mischief mouse are neat enough to be viral. (In Whack-a-CEO, you get to clobber some of your favorite rich guys).

By giving away these games, the company behind Raging Mouse (an old favorite Sausalito based tech-recruiter who used to be jobsight.com), creates a reason for people to visit the site and figure out the occasionally cryptic design.

All in all, we think it's a breath of fresh air in a room that needs ventilation. By leaps and bounds, Raging Mouse is the most interesting design concept we've seen. It looks like they've figured out how to be proud of being a parody of themselves.

- John Sumser

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