Mistakes are made every day in the design and development world. It’s nothing to be ashamed of; it happens. In fact, mistakes are one of the most powerful learning tools at our disposal. Our mistakes impart important lessons that we carry with us as we continue to hone our skill set. Own your mistakes. Never shy away from them; they are the milestones in our development.

So often we view mistakes negatively and let them get us down. We believe they indicate failure and that our otherwise perfect record will be forever marred. No one is perfect; we all make mistakes. They indicate failure only if we fail to learn from them.

How often have you stayed late, trying to get something done and did some embarrassing mistake instead? We can learn from our mistakes and mistakes of our colleagues. Image credit

The online design and development community is a wonderful resource in this respect. Not only are members open about their mistakes, they share their experiences as learning opportunities for others — this is helpful for those of us who have not yet suffered through the same bumps in the road.

With this in mind, we turned again to our Twitter followers and Facebook fans to find out about the worst design or programming mistakes they have ever made. Now we share them with you, our readers, so that we can all learn from them and avoid making the same mistakes.

Related Posts

• 9 Common Usability Mistakes in Web Design is a useful post that covers some common mistakes made when designing for the Web.
• Speaking of common mistakes, here is another entry from our archive that lets you in on some problems faced by e-commerce designers: 15 Common Mistakes in E-Commerce Design.

[By the way, did you know we have a free Email Newsletter? Subscribe now and get fresh short tips and tricks in your inbox!]

Bait And Switch

The first common mistake we should learn from — and which several of our followers have had to face — is the old bait and switch. It occurs across the spectrum, for the newb and the accomplished professional, because it’s an easy mistake to make as the working hours add up. What is the bait and switch? It happens when you’re working on one version of a website or project and, at some point during the tinkering, you accidentally switch it for the active website or project before it’s ready.

When we’re in a constant back-and-forth workflow, getting mixed up is easy, at which point the bait and switch can happen. And it causes all kinds of chaos and headaches. Awareness and caution are needed to prevent this error from being part of your personal experience. Before you finalize changes or processes, be sure you’re working with the right file and uploading to the correct location. This isn’t a sure-fire prevention plan, but it will certainly improve your chances.

What Our Followers Said

• “I accidentally put a half-finished (with massive broken bits) update of a website over top of the current live one without a back-up.”
• “I sent $10,000 worth of product to a customer while testing an ordering portal.”
• “I deleted an actual repository instead of a working copy. #svn”
• “Worst programming mistake: editing off a live server and then uploading an old version of the website. All files lost!”
• “Sat on the development FTP for half an hour, being mad that the live website wouldn’t update!”
• “Moved the entire directory of websites on a live server into a different folder, then lost it or deleted the in-house CMS”
• “Programming mistake: writing data to the wrong database.”
• “Uploading to the dev website FTP and wondering why the live website wasn’t changing, which sent me around the bend in the process!”

Falling Behind On Back-Ups

Given that back-up-related mistakes usually come to light once you realize you’ve just pulled a bait and switch, we’ll tackle these next. Problems with back-up files are common in the design and development community, and they are openly lamented. For some reason, though, many of us still find ourselves panicked when we realize we have no current back-ups of the project we’re working on. And it usually hits us just after we lose the active version of the project and need it replaced.

We can take steps to save elements of our work and prevent episodes like this from becoming remorseful blog posts. You can be either low-tech or high-tech when you address this potential problem, but you need to do something. It could be as simple as making a list of details to check daily, and backing up data could be the final step. Alternatively, you could pay for an automated back-up service that guarantees completion of the task. There are several options, each with pros and cons, so find one that works for you and implement it post-haste.

What Our Followers Said

• “I moved a dynamic, CMS-contained website across to a new server. Forgot to back up, then deleted templates in the process. D’oh!”
• “Mistake: not backing up a compiled Flash slideshow, replacing it, then realizing the new version was completely broken.”

Measure Once, Cut Twice

The next mistake we’ll cover happens fairly often. For any number of reasons, we end up measuring once and cutting twice, so to speak. The measurements we work with vary greatly from project to project and from Web to print, so we need to be alert to what we are sizing and aiming for. Sometimes it isn’t so much the measurements as it is the content that requires a re-cut.

Often calculations, measurements and the concept phase need more time than expected. Turning off the computer and getting back to the sketch board or a notebook is often very useful to avoid mistakes. Image credit

Chalk it up to being overzealous or getting sloppy in our work as we push toward deadlines. If these are the reasons for our re-cuts, prevention is easy: just avoid those things… which is easier said than done. Still, if we mind our p’s and q’s and double-check everything before submitting it, our chances of embarrassment decrease. Follow the carpenter’s old rule of thumb, “Measure twice, cut once” — it benefits us designers and developers, too.

What Our Followers Said

• “Mistake: having 20,000 cards printed that didn’t fit into a lanyard card holder”
• “Got my colleague’s phone number wrong on her business card… We ordered 2,000.”
• “This isn’t really a programming mistake, but the most embarrassing mistake I’ve made in Web design was buying a domain name that had the client’s name in it — but part of the name was wrong. Good thing domains are cheap!”
• “I managed to drop an ‘m’ off ‘millimeters’ in InDesign. Ended up with an 88-meter-wide business card. Schoolboy!”
• “I think most of us have experienced the horror of hitting ‘Send’ on an e-blast, only to quickly realize it’s wrong.”
• “Mistake: when I post something and then two weeks later or more, I find out something’s wrong with it.”
• “A couple of years back, I made a beginner’s design mistake with print: envelopes and paper didn’t match.”
• “Sent PDF to the printing house for 1000 leaflets. Received them and realized that the phone number was wrong. Then, sent corrected PDF, received leaflets and realized that the wrong PDF was sent. We had 1000 useless leaflets with the right number but with the ‘iStockphoto’ watermark on every (lo-res) picture. Third time it was OK.”
• “I dropped an ‘L’ from the word ‘public’ in a school prospectus (and website). Honest mistake!”

Miscommunicate Expectations

Another problem encountered by designers and developers that you can learn from before encountering it is a breakdown of communication with a client or boss. Many of us let things become unclear or slip by, which makes us unsure whether everyone involved in a project is on the same page. Usually this is caused by a lack of confidence in ourselves or fear that asking for clarification would reflect poorly on us. Whatever the reason, we decide not to revisit the issue and instead proceed with a shaky understanding of what we’re supposed to do.

Every time we communicate with our boss or client, we open ourselves up to the possibility that one or two ideas might get lost in translation. We should be as clear and concise as possible in our discussions so that work stays on track… at least on our end — we can’t control others. If we’re dealing with someone who is unfamiliar with the design and development field, understanding what they’re asking for can be tricky. Take notes, and go over them with clients at the end of meetings so that everyone understands where things stand. Good notes prevent communication blunders.

What Our Followers Said

• “I underestimated the amount of content that two different clients wanted. Not a clear picture from the start.”
• “For my part, I must say, not reading a ticket well enough and spending two days coding something that wasn’t asked for. Over-enthusiastic FTW!”
• Emily Buck: “My mistake was telling my current employer than I have some experience in Web design (meaning HTML and some CSS); now it’s part of my job to learn how to code ASP and maintain and redesign our entire e-commerce website. Ugh. I’m a print designer!”
• “I’m in the same situation as Emily. Job description and interview included ‘some Web,’ and now I’m trying to learn PHP and run a full searchable retailer list for my company! Thank God for online tutorials!”

Careless Coding

When it comes to coding, we can easily drop the ball. Coding is an in-depth process, in which many different layers are stacked on top of each other, and one can get lost in it. This is one reason why developers comment in their code: so that they leave trails of breadcrumbs throughout their projects. This is a good habit to form, but sometimes it leads to an embarrassing faux pas or frustrating hours of rebuilding, as revealed by our followers.

With just one misfired keystroke, a project can go from a coder’s dream to a virtual nightmare, with no perceptible way out. As if that’s not enough, our coding comments can bite us in the back end, especially if we’ve thrown some nonsensical, fun or unprofessional bits into the code and forgot to remove them. We need to be mindful as we code and avoid distractions as much as possible to avoid burying mistakes so deep that they reveal themselves only after hours of careful combing. Also, take one last look through your comments to be sure you’re not leaving something that you’d rather others not see.

What Our Followers Said

• “I left some profanity in a client’s HTML once while testing text-indent (off-screen position). Very, very embarrassing.”
• “Accidentally leaving things like ‘Mooooo’ and ‘Baaaaa’ in code that has gone live!”
• “I used to write haiku in my code to mark my place, and I think I forgot a few out there somewhere… not anymore!”
• “I once did (as root) `rm -rf tmp /` instead of `rm -rf tmp/` on a Friday afternoon. Painful weekend.”
• “A typical one: Using = instead of == in an if statement. Always takes quite some time to figure out.”
• “Typed rm -rf .* on the server. @wsttn wasn’t happy when I deleted everything.”
• “Using a body * { text-align: center; } on a log-in form, but accidentally placing it in the default style sheet instead of the specific log-in style sheet. Our largest customer didn’t like it when it went live.”
• “I removed the ID from the ‘Submit payment’ button, and the website failed to take bookings for six hours. Lost £20,000.”
• “Forgot the where clause when testing SQL to a user table. No fun, I tell ya!”

Forgetting The Filler

Sometimes we forget to redact our coding comments and leave in an embarrassing tidbit or two. There are also times when we accidentally leave in filler content. That’s not necessarily a problem unless the client does not recognize it as filler, because then they might not remove it either. Remember that clients, especially the less technically savvy ones, are probably extremely paranoid about deleting anything, so any filler you forget to pull will inevitably be published to the masses.

Again, it comes down to vigilance. We can’t stress enough — on top of all the other stresses in the design and development field — the importance of double- and triple-checking all of these elements before labeling anything as complete. Certainly do this before turning anything over to the client. Making a generic checklist for every project you take on will help you avoid these mistakes. Remind yourself somehow to watch for elements that tend to slip through the cracks.

What Our Followers Said

• “Forgetting to remove nonsense words (used for testing) in an assignment and losing marks. Otherwise, perfect code.”
• “Two words: dummy data. Strictly ‘Lorem Ipsum’ ever since.”
• “One time I left an unkind phrase about a client in the comments, and they found it later on.”

Wrong Tool For The Job

The last mistake we’ll discuss in depth usually occurs early on in our experience in the design and development field: using the wrong tool for the job. It does happen, and more often than we’d like. When you’re unfamiliar with a field, you’ll sometimes use the wrong platform yet believe you’re on solid ground. At some point, you find out that the program, a supposed godsend, is not compatible with your client’s program or the program of others involved in the project.

Wrong tools doesn’t necessarily mean your coding or designing applications, it also can mean a wrong environment or computer setup. On the photo above, the setup looks solid and well-organized. Image credit.

Communication can assist in this area, though not as much as research. Find out from your client exactly where the project is going, and contact them yourself to ensure that files will be delivered in the proper format. You can leave this to the client, but you are responsible for ensuring compatibility, so it’s best not to leave it to someone else. Also, as you transition to new areas, research the tools of the trade to avoid making this mistake.

What Our Followers Said

• “I tried to deliver my very first program for Notts County FC to the printers in MS Publisher. I cringe even now.”
• “The first Photoshop website I ever did was a sliced PSD with all of the content in images… That was back in 1999/2000.”
• “Using Drupal to do ‘quick ’n’ dirty’ websites. They were dirty, but they sure weren’t quick.”
• “Designing a database app: rather than de-normalizing data, adding/removing table columns on the fly. Long time ago!”
• “Hard-coding a navigation across 10 pages instead of using an include. Was new to Web dev at the time.”
• “Depending on an external source for data and, because that crashed, our website crashed. Almost cost me my job.”

More Mistakes To Learn From

Below are several more community-contributed pearls of wisdom that we can learn from. We’d like to thank our dedicated followers who revealed their biggest mistakes so that we could benefit from their toil and trouble.

• “Mistake: severely undercharging for a massive job. My very first freelancing job. Was not worth the time and effort!”
• “There was a time in the ’90s when I thought Papyrus was beautiful. *Hangs head in shame*”
• “I once created an iteration of a logo using Comic Sans, and it was chosen! I’m not proud, but I was young and naive at the time.”
• “Used Comic Sans for something serious.”
• “How about 90,000 alert emails sent to four people over one weekend (myself, a colleague and website owners) = 360,000 emails.”
• “Deleted the shopping cart table from a live website instead of deleting one of the records in the table.”
• “The worst programming mistake I made was to develop an admin area with cookies only (without other security systems).”

Further Reading

Here are a few relevant articles you might want to check out. Definitely worth reading if and when you get the chance.

• 43 Web Design Mistakes You Should Avoid
  An article from Daily Blog Tips that identifies dozens of mistakes that designers make, so you can avoid them.
• The 10 Most Common Mistakes Web Designers Make
  A helpful post from the Smashing Network via our sister website Noupe.
• 10 Mistakes Freelance Graphic Designers Make When Starting Out
  This useful post from WAHM targets beginners.
• The Top 12 SEO Mistakes Designers Make
  Another informative post that teaches by walking you through the mistakes of others.
• Top Mistakes New Designers Make When Learning Graphic Design
  Graphic Design Blogs’ post for beginners to help them steer clear of certain mistakes while learning.

What about you?

What is the worst design or programming mistake you’ve ever made? And if you’d like to participate in other discussions and contribute to articles like this one, follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook. Thank you.

(al)

© Robert Bowen for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | Post a comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
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Thank heavens for the rise of electronic books–burning these, instead of the paper kind, as a hate crime (after flip-flopping on your decision when the world media and the President pins you with criticism) would also violate toxic fumes/smoke-free zoning laws.

1. Shock horror(ish) in the cell phone world: Olli Pekka-Kallasvuo will leave his position as President and CEO of Nokia on September 20th, and be replaced by Stephen Elop, the phone giant has just announced. Elop previously “held senior executive positions in a number of US-based public companies, including Juniper Networks, Adobe Systems Inc., and Macromedia Inc.” and will be “able to drive both innovation and efficient execution of the company strategy in order to deliver increased value to our shareholders,” according to Nokia’s board. The not-so-subtle implication here is that OPK resolutely hasn’t been doing these things. It’s also surprising as we know Nokia, as its previously stated, likes to keep things in the Finnish family due to perceived work ethic conflicts with North American types … and Elop is Canadian. Looks like Nokia read our article on how to improve itself.

2. DARPA, too, wishes to exercise more control over its business or, more specifically, over the actions of its warfighters. It’s revealed plans to try to “remote control” soldiers in the field. No joke, and no sci-fi fiction either: Its intentions involve using helmet-mounted ultrasound devices to jiggle, cajole, steer and oscillate soldier’s actual brain matter. Ready to get nervous? Read this next bit. The plan centers on research from Arizona State U’s neuroscientist William Tyler, who noted to Wired that “the brain serves all the functions of your body, and if you knew the neuroanatomy, then you can start to regulate each one of those functions.” For troops this involves boosting troop brain power, preventing traumatic injuries, increasing alertness and so on. Cue conspiracy theorists in 3…2…1… Can it boost bravery, and make soldiers do things they wouldn’t otherwise want to do? Do you trust the government to use this tech responsibly?

3. Net security firm Kaspersky has warned that there’s a significant threat from a new sex virus. No, edit that: A virus linked to a sex movie. Computer virus, that is. The file is hidden in an email that promises free pink-pixel movies, possibly with the mail subject line containing a phrase like “Here you have.” Inside a weblink appears to link to a PDF, but instead hooks up to a malware-hosting website. The virus hides on your PC, and tries to disable security software. Then it tries to email itself to everyone it can find in your email system. Some reports suggest that a handful of big corporations–including NASA and Disney–have been suffering badly at the hands of this newbie. So stay safe, folks: What where you’re sticking your … click. 

4. News about the software industry is always interesting if you’re an economist type–the business is bigger than the movie game, and may be an indicator of trouble or fortunes to come. Now a new survey is shaking things up since it reveals game sales slumped by 10% in August, and many thinkers are scratching their heads. We think it’s pretty easy: The attractions of the beach, sunshine and beer still outweigh the pleasure of steering a sprite around onscreen. Plus Europe, the home of millions of gamers and many gaming studios, is basically on vacation for the month. We joke, slightly, but this summer was extra-sunny, wasn’t it?

5. Think the newspaper industry is a dinosaur? Well in some cases where it violently savages smaller prey for its own bloodthirsty efforts at survival, you’re probably right (we’re talking about you, Righthaven). But this doesn’t mean it’s completely closed to new thinking, and there’s some indication now that the venerable New York Times is collaborating with a company called BetaWorks to craft a social-based News service dubbed News.me. Impressive! Looks like one can teach an old monster new tricks.

This past Tuesday, a huge (and confusing) international police squad based in Sweden coordinated raids in 14 different countries, aiming to shut down one of the cores of piracy, known as The Scene. Three days later, the time has come to look around and evaluate the state of piracy–and it turns out, pretty much everything is just as it was.

Just about all of the major BitTorrent sites, including The Pirate Bay and BTJunkie, are back online, though What.cd, a private music site, is still out. Interestingly, though The Pirate Bay and What.cd either were down or remain down, leaders from both sites have commented that the downtime is unrelated to the raids. Specifics are vague (especially from What.cd, which currently sports a warning to “stop speculating” and little else), and The Pirate Bay claims they were merely upgrading servers. It’s pretty curious that these two major sites would just happen to go down for routine maintenance while an unrelated but massive piracy raid was happening, but that’s the information we have.

Users probably have noticed that their BitTorrent activity can continue just about as before–not much has changed, from the casual end-user perspective. But behind the scenes, the raid was surprisingly effective. Targeted specifically at members of The Scene, a shadowy nerd cabal of high-level pirates, the raid managed to take several key servers in Sweden, the Czech Republic, and The Netherlands offline, and at least ten people have been detained as a result.

What does that mean for you? Well, releases from The Scene are certainly likely to decrease in volume, which should make Microsoft, Adobe, and other makers of oft-pirated software happy. It could well be harder to snag an up-to-date pirated copy of Photoshop or Windows in this post-raid world. But if you’re trying to get this week’s episode of Top Chef, you probably won’t notice much difference in your illegal, morally reprehensible routine.

Are the raid’s effects permanent? Almost definitely not. Scratch that–definitely not. Check out this CNET article from 2001–some of the terms and specifics are different, but that nearly decade-old raid is very similar to what happened this week in Europe, and of course we know how piracy turned out. Piracy can’t be stopped by this kind of raid–it’ll make the lives of some top-level pirates pretty miserable, but it won’t stop the problem at its core. Maybe nothing can.

Dan Nosowitz, the author of this post, can be followed on Twitter, corresponded with via email, and stalked in Brooklyn (no link for that one–you’ll have to do the legwork yourself).

Intel CEO Paul Otellini sat down with the Wall Street Journal for a quick talk in which he touched on some of the more interesting projects and goings-on at the world’s biggest chip company. He glanced over the aqcuisition of mobile chipmaker Infineon, noting that smartphones with Intel chips will finally see release in 2011. More interesting, and more pressing, are his comments on Google TV.

Intel is a key partner of the Google TV project, along with Sony and Logitech–I dubbed them the A-Team in a post back in March, accompanied by some of my finest Photoshop work. Otellini even noted that “there’s roughly 10 million lines of code in there. Half of that comes from Intel; the other half comes from Google.”

So Intel is totally invested in Google TV, and it makes sense that Otellini would be asked to comment on Google TV’s chances against Apple TV. You might think he’s being diplomatic when he says, “I also believe there are probably households that one will appeal to and the other won’t,” but I actually agree with him. The two products are fundamentally different–as I’ve said before, Google TV is a supplement, while Apple TV is an addition.

He specifies that the Apple TV might appeal to technophobes due to its simplicity, aping the “Mom” example I used a few months ago, while the Google TV might appeal to his son, who might want more options.

Nobody has really seen how Google TV works in the day-to-day, so it’s hard to tell if he’s right. While Apple TV is something familiar (after all, it can’t do anything existing products like Boxee, XBMC, or Windows Media Center can’t already handle), Google TV is a big new paradigm for the living room. It might take off like Android, or fail due to lack of understanding, like Google Wave. But Intel, at least, appears to be confident.

Otellini also spilled the beans on a release date, specifying “this month” (meaning September). He didn’t mention in which form Google TV would first arrive–embedded inside Sony HDTVs seems likely–but even merely stating the release month is sort of surprising and sloppy. Google hasn’t announced a date yet–why is the Intel CEO mouthing off about it? Hopefully Google TV doesn’t succumb to the same sloppiness.

Dan Nosowitz, the author of this post, can be followed on Twitter, corresponded with via email, and stalked in Brooklyn (no link for that one–you’ll have to do the legwork yourself).

If you haven’t tried Google Instant yet, you’re either not much of a Net surfer or you live outside the U.S. (where it seems Instant is slow to roll out). It’s impressive, intuitive, and a little annoying, almost as if Google is trying to guess what’s going on inside your head. Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt hinted, back at the launch of real time Twitter integration, that Google’s ultimate goal was to achieve search at the speed of the mind–and Instant is pretty much as close as they’ll get for the moment.

Still, Google has one disadvantage when it comes to matching your brain. It relies
on millions of slices of silicon to do its basic search tasks. And Google Instant just makes its server burden much worse.

The idea is that you’ll save many thousands of seconds every year–a couple each time you access Google to look for something. Google serves up countless millions of search matches every second. Multiply that by a few seconds per user, and Google is potentially saving the world billions of dollars worth of work-hours.

But this effort inevitably costs Google. It costs a lot. Its entire search system has to work more swiftly, and serve up dynamically-changing lists of search results as you type into its query box–not only does it have to dig them out of its archive, but it also has to format them and push them to your browser in a time fast enough to be relevant (before you type the next letter is a good measure of this speed.) During the Instant presentation Ben Gomes explained that the server burden has risen by somewhere between 10 and 20 times. 

That’s likely to increase Google’s carbon footprint, not to mention its electricity bill. All that server power has to come from somewhere, even while Google uses tricks (like biasing its guesses towards words that’re more likely than others–guessing “snow” is more likely to follow when you type “s” than “syzygy”).

As for all those spare seconds that’ve just been given to you, you may well end up spending them on Google anyway. Why? Two reasons. Firstly, as Google Instant “guesses” search results that match your incomplete query, you’re likely to notice sites popping up that you wouldn’t have seen before (even if they’re only tangentially linked to your intended phrase).Human curiosity being what it is, you may well click on one of them.

Secondly, now that Google delivers things so very swiftly–often beating you to the punch–you do get a genuine feeling of satisfaction from using it. And that may be a gentle prompt for you to try out a few clicks on Google that you may never have tried beforehand–such as a quick image search.

If Instant does cause that kind of halo effect, Google’s server burden may be yet higher than the company suspects. And that’s not even accounting for any new Internet memes based around the real-time search results. Will Instant be the straw that broke the back of Google’s server farms?

To keep up with this news follow me, Kit Eaton, on Twitter.

For a hint at what the next generation of architects are working on, take a look at this year’s class of Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellows, all of whom are attempting to combine quality design and affordable housing. Each fellow spends three years working in an underserved community, interacting with locals, and coming up with ideas for green buildings that best serve the surrounding area.

The 2010 class is working toward some pretty ambitious goals. Juan Calaf is creating design standards in Puerto Rico that blend locally available sustainable materials with community planning principles. Joann Ware is working with the InterIm Community Development Agency in Seattle to incorporate health, intergenerational community-building and neighborhood engagement into sustainable building projects.

It will take years before these projects get off the ground, but a glimpse at the work of past fellows is encouraging.  Jess Wendover’s Eastside Cultural Center, Laura Shipman’s Parcel G Supportive Housing Development, and Nathaniel Corum’s Environmental Research Center are all examples of successful projects that changed disadvantaged communities for the better. All told, 31 Enterprise Rose fellows have designed over 46 buildings and produced 5,500 affordable, energy-efficient homes across the U.S. in the decade since the fellowship began. This year’s class of fellows has, in other words, a lot to live up to.

Ariel Schwartz can be reached on Twitter or by email.

Watch out, Toyota, Nissan, and Mitsubishi. Fellow Asian car company Hyundai is gunning for the growing electric vehicle market with an EV of its own.

Dubbed the BlueOn, Hyundai’s entrant in the all-electric market will have a maximum speed of 80.6 mph, travel 87 miles on a single charge, and fill its battery to 80% capacity in 25 minutes using a 380-volt fast-charge station. Just one catch: the vehicle will only be sold in South Korea.

Next month, Hyundai will deliver 30 prototypes of the vehicle to various South Korean governmental organizations. If all goes well, the company will make a mass market push. It hopes to deliver 2,500 BlueOns by 2012.

The BlueOn’s rival cars — Toyota Prius, Nissan Leaf, and Mitsubishi i-MiEV — should all be standing tall in the U.S. market by then (the Prius already is, of course). A Hyundai spokeswoman told the Associated Press that it was “too early too discuss potential export markets at the moment.” But the car company would be wise to consider the U.S. in the coming years, especially since electric vehicle charge company Ecotality plans to install 15,000 charging stations in 16 cities by next summer.
Once that happens, the U.S. will have multiple EV-ready highways just waiting for eager car companies to show off their wares.

Ariel Schwartz can be reached on Twitter or by email.

The United States has fallen from second to fourth place in The World Economic Forum (WEF)’s Global Competitiveness Report for 2010-2011. Switzerland seized the top spot, followed by Sweden, then Singapore. Germany came in 5th. The report indicates that deficits, debt, and loss of faith in public institutions torpedoed the U.S.’s ranking.

The rankings take into consideration 12 factors: “institutions, infrastructure, macroeconomic environment, health and
primary education, higher education and training, goods market
efficiency, labour market efficiency, financial market development,
technological readiness, market size, business sophistication, and
innovation,” according to the press release. The much-anticipated report comes ahead of the WEF meeting in Tianjin, China, next week.

A stable economy and strong culture of innovation helped Switzerland retain the top spot for the second year, according to the report. And China is a consistent mover, rising from No. 30 in 2008 to No. 29 last year and to 27 this year.

Japan took 6th. Hong Kong, in a heated battle with Singapore to be a major Asian economic hub, came in at No. 11. Singapore ranked third.

“Administrative shortcomings and problems in the financial market” caused South Korea to fall three points to 22nd place, and Saudi Arabia ranked ahead of South Korea, at 21st place.

In addition to analyzing publicly available data, the rankings are based on an opinion survey with over 13,000 business leaders in over 130 countries.

Timberland has initiated a massive stretch of innovative corporate social responsibility efforts and campaigns over the years, and the company has just announced its latest Earthkeepers product campaign, “Nature Needs Heroes.” With a microsite, online 3-D features, and in-store 3-D displays, the campaign appeals to customers who want to be immersed in the outdoors at all times, even inside a Timberland store.

Jim Davey, who came from Nickelodeon to the company in 2009 as Vice President of Global Marketing, is bringing a playful air to the campaign with in-your-face sensory-stimulating 3-D features, recycled 3-D glasses, recycled rubber in the products, extensive outdoor imagery used in the campaign, and the virtual forest application on Facebook. Davey tells Fast Company a little more about where this latest environmental marketing campaign fits in for the company’s do-good approach.

Timberland has engaged in a number of CSR initiatives over the years. How is this one different?This campaign is one way we ‘re storytelling around our environmental platform. Nature Needs Heroes highlights the environmental attributes of our products and encourages our consumers to do what they can, big and small, to improve the environment. In this sense, we’re putting the consumer at the center of the story.

Have you found that men or women or a specific age group are more receptive to your environmental marketing efforts?Our consumer is more about mindset than demographics. They love the outdoors. And because they love the outdoors, they want to do what they can to help protect it, so they and future generations can continue to enjoy it. But first they want product that performs and looks great—environmental features like recycled PET are the icing on the cake, that lets them feel good about their purchase and they are doing their bit for the environment. The key is that consumers don’t have to compromise–they can now [buy] more sustainable gear without sacrificing style, comfort, or performance.

Timberland has gone 3D and very multimedia-heavy for this campaign; what was the impetus for that and what’s the overarching vision for such choices?Our core promise is that we equip people for all their outdoor experiences. With 3-D, people can feel like they are actually part of that experience. We’re also making a concerted effort to connect with the twenty-something crowd so being everywhere is a necessity.

What’s the next frontier for innovation in CSR–not just for Timberland, but for businesses in general?One of the emerging spaces in CSR will be around companies empowering people to extend their awareness about environmental and social responsibility to their individual purchasing decisions. If consumers vote with their dollars to reward companies that are creating sustainable products, they’ll have incentive to create more products that respect the physical environment. The most innovative companies will take it even further—creating products that are built to last and then designed to be recycled and continually reused.