The Flash Usability Challenge ($150 prize!) over at WebWord.com is challenging folks to find "an effective and usable web site using Flash, from a company generating a profit", charging that "Flash produces web sites that are not suitable to e-commerce". While I agree there are a lot of sites out there using Flash poorly, it's not fair to blame the technology for the faults of overzealous designers and poor design decisions.

Some thoughts pertaining to Flash, ecommerce, profits, &c.:

- When it comes right down to it, Flash includes all of the functionality of HTML. A good designer could build a very simple forms-based shopping cart site in Flash that would be nearly identical to one built in HTML. The HTML version would have an overall smaller file size, but the Flash version, if built correctly, would not have to reload any pages once fully loaded, not even for error checking.

- Imagine ShirtSignals as a Flash site. It wouldn't be any different from the HTML version of the site. The ShirtSignals interface succeeds because it is simple and intuitive...the Flash version would succeed for the same reasons.

- You see very few usable Flash Web sites because designers are interested in using Flash to create rich, multimedia experiences...whatever that means. As more designers get exposed to Flash and its capabilities (form elements in Flash have only been around since the release of Flash 4), we'll start to see folks who are interested in building usable sites in Flash.

- "I want to see a site that can service customers and turn a profit while using Flash technology. I don't think it can be done." I want to see a site that does that with HTML...Yahoo! not included. A profitable pure-play ("the site must be profitable without any outside corporate help") Internet company is hard to find these days, Flash or not.

- I don't know that profitability is a good measure of how usable something is. There are loads of companies out there turning a hefty profit while making their customers jump through hoops.

Having said all that, I have two entries for the contest:

1. LAUNCHCast, specifically the player and the rating mechanism. Fire up the player and you'll see that it's mostly done in Flash. When a song starts playing, you can rate the song, the artist, or the album the song is from...all in the player interface. No clumsy HTML page reloading or anything. You drag the slider and the Flash movie sends the results seamlessly to the server. Extremely usable.

Now click on the name of the artist; it will take you to the artist's page. On that page, you can rate several of the artist's albums & a few related artists in seconds without leaving that page, a process that would take significantly longer using HTML. Clicking through to a specific album lets you rate each song on that album individually, again in seconds. This is an excellent use of Flash to aid users in performing a task that would be significantly more difficult to perform in HTML. It gives me hope that designers will eventually figure out stuff like this to do with Flash to make it easier for users to get stuff done.

But according to the guidelines of the contest, LAUNCHCast is out because Launch.com is not turning a profit, Flash isn't being used specifically for an ecommerce function, and most of the site is not Flash-based.

2. One9ine. While Flash isn't being used in as useful a manner as with LAUNCHCast, the use of it on the One9ine site, I think, fits within the rules of the contest:

- The site uses Flash to sell something...design services in this case.

- The site is at least 75% Flash.

- One9ine is profitable. Now, I don't know for sure, but judging from their client list and their reputation, I think Matt Owens is probably driving a pretty nice car around town these days.

- Flash contributes to One9ine's ability to get business. One9ine is all about style and cutting edge design. That's what gets them the big clients that pay the big bills. Flash is an excellent way for them to showcase their style, edginess, and familiarity with the latest multimedia technologies.

Another possible entry, which I just remembered, is the Ted Baker site, which uses Flash quite well in an ecommerce context.

Any thoughts on any of this? Comments, questions, suggestions, and complaints are always welcome...send 'em along to jason@kottke.org.