When I heard that the intro video for the HP Slate was out, I had to watch it. Then, just like the video said, I went to hp.com/slate to check it out. Then, when I woke up from the coma their boring ass site put me into, I started writing this post.

Seriously though people, look at the site. SO BORING.

Yes, that giant graphic is clickable, but does anything make you WANT to click it? Nope.

The boring text tells you the boring details about how you can get more info about the HP Slate. Email submission? Really?

Now, I’m not one to get all over a company for design aesthetics, but this page just made me thoroughly not excited about this product. If this is their idea of a page that is meant to drum up excitement about what quite honestly looks like it might be a great product, I think it fails.

Something like this lends itself perfectly to a great social media campaign prior to launch with videos (which they actually have, but they show up in a pop-up player only after you figure out the riddle of where to click) and great content/interaction. Instead, HP has a boring link to their general HP Twitter feed – no icon, nothing that makes you want to click.

I never try to criticize without offering suggestions and assistance, so here it goes:

• Have a more-explicit call to action in the headline. Something like “Touch here to learn more about HP’s Slate”
• Have a mouseover animation on the actual Slate where something changed to let the user know to actually click. As it is now, you can’t actually tell that’s a video launcher.
• I’d also have the actual video play within the border of the Slate, so make it bigger and do that with options to go full screen, etc.
• Also, lose that hand in the back, it looks weird. Why would someone touch the back of the device?
• Loose the boring fonts, HP uses some cool, funky fonts. Use those.
• Lose the boring e-mail submission fields
• Use the space on the right to link out to social media sites (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter) by using icons, not a boring URL.
• Make everything shareable – videos, the page, etc.

If HP wants to know more, they can contact me. I’m always willing to help out, but for now I see a potentially great product getting off to a lackluster start.