Squint testing your product

Can you define your entire product in a screenshot? Yesterday I got into a good discussion about the “squint test” on various products.

If I take one connotical screen shot of a product, and squint, what’s the impression of the product? Because, guess what, that’s what your users think your product is. I think this is the general thing with Tumblr, no matter how much early on it attempted to be this new “tumblelog” thing when you look at the screen and squint it screams, “ooh, pretty blogs.”

Alex over at Harmonix has talked about the same issue with Frequency and Amplitude (the games that happened before Guitar Hero & Rock Band).  Both got great reviews from the small number of people that played it, but if you look at a screenshot it reads something like, “super ridiculously busy space racing game of some sort?”

If you think about plenty of products that you love you can probably boil them to a single squinted screen shot.. The ebay listing, the Twitter feed, Portal, Zombies defending against plants. What other examples/counter examples?