Spotted this amusing WSJ piece about Southwest Airlines’ penchant for curating their own kitsch, “Southwest Decor: Somebody’s Ponytail and Photos of Pets.” The most interesting thing about it from our perspective: how one particular employee, Joe Shubert, managed to intelligently categorize enough random memorabilia to fill over 21,000 square feet of new wall space at the airline’s expanded HQ.

It’s not so much that Mr. Shubert couldn’t undertake such a project and succeed at it - more that he apparently has done so in a fashion that not only makes sense on paper, but which a) enables employees to navigate the building better based on the categories and b) allows people to locate specific items in specific places for business purposes. The article mentions at least one anecdote wherein a key fact - the date of the airline’s first government certificate of operation - was determined because someone found it on a wall, presumably where they expected to. The HQ staff even have a phrase for that activity: “going to the wall.”

Kudos to Mr. Shubert for perpetuating what sounds like an eminently workable navigation system for highly unstructured data.

JF

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 28th, 2005 at 1:09 pm and is filed under General, User Interface Design.