Winntech (Thanks, Autumn!)

Winntech is a design company, but unlike most of the design companies we see in this column, they design actual physical spaces visited by real people, rather than making bad websites. Well, technically they've made one bad site, but it's more "bizarre and hard to approach" than anything else.

See, Winntech creates those in-store displays you see for shit like smartphones and new laptops. And if you believe what the people from these stores have to say, they're really good at it. So they took those design smarts and they made this 3-D website that you navigate by "walking around." This seems like it could be a pretty cool idea, in theory. Unfortunately, in practice, you're confronted with a junkyard that has bad music playing all over the place. And if you wander near an interactive thing, it shifts your focus to it and makes a noise. Which is okay, i guess, until you try to walk away and it grabs your focus again, three times. Then it becomes a pain in the ass.

Incidentally, about the fifth time the "job openings" board popped up at me, I noticed they aren't looking for a web designer. They probably should be.

Here's a fun little easter egg! Try walking away from the junkyard. You'll notice two things: One, your computer slows immensely while it tries to handle all the little bouncing graphics because no one thought to include a draw distance. Two -- and this one might cause a seizure -- someone built in something fun to deal with people who "rebuke convention" and "abandon fear" by trying to test the site's boundaries! So if you like flashing screens and blaring sirens and a congratulatory ostrich, go ahead and do that! It rules! Unless you have epilepsy. Sorry if you do.

Oh, I should probably mention the tutorial. I beat it on my first try ( ), but it seems like they could've just told me "navigate with the arrow keys!" Or incorporated mouse control. Whichever.

– Daryl "Fucking" Hall