I caught some of Everyday Edisons the other day, which looked promising (though I would prefer less fluff and more focus on the process of designing and marketing the products. American Inventor season two premiers tonight on ABC. I saw some of American Inventor last year and it was interesting (though it didn’t grab me enough to get me to watch often). Still compared to the usual TV fair they look interesting and do actually provide some insight into turning ideas into products.

One minor point I find funny and a bit lame. On the Everyday Edisons web site they show a photo with 10 people and then have an image underneath it with text (yes image text like a myspace page - obviously whoever is responsible for this website doesn’t follow the advice of the web usability experts - this image text is just one example, another is that every time you go the home page it starts playing a video with audio - it is annoying to have web sites with so little idea of good web design practices) that states something like “I thought there were 14 inventors, I only see seven. What’s up?” The image actually shows 10 people - not 7, what is up with someone that only sees 7?

Related: Engineering Education Reality TV (which I also note web usability failings) - Help Choose the New PBS Science Program - Japan Project X: Innovators Documentaries

The show follows 7 inventions (some have two or three inventors attached to them). A funny example of the failure of operational definition (they need to define what they mean to count 7 from that photo because that isn’t what most will do I don’t think. They appear not to count extra inventors shown in the photo, but I think most people are not thinking hey I only see 7 when they see 10 people. They were originally planning on 7 inventions but found so many good ones they decided to double the scale of the project but the first 7 are going to make up the first half of the show and then the second 7. The show itself suffers from the style over substance tendencies of the web site but still looks promising.