User Experience Design Blog

Sep 13, 2010 - A recent Financial Times article, “Functionality remains Baidu’s priority“ (free registration required), juxtaposes Baidu’s product development philosophy with that of its chief rival, Google. The piece states that Baidu focuses on making functionality that allows the average user to get things done, while Google’s approach is pushing out a ton of “cool” features and hoping that some of them [...]

Nov 12, 2009 - Today is World Usability Day. Don’t forget to get involved and see the events happening near you. For Boston, there are a series of events at South Station, titled “Connecting the Dots” In San Francisco, check out: Design Matters: An Open House to Celebrate World Usability Day And of course, please do comment/share any events you have or [...]

Mar 26, 2009 - Douglas Bowman, largely credited with building the visual design team at Google, left the company on Friday, March 20. On his last day he wrote his reasons for leaving on his blog, Stopdesign. In the post he states his frustration with data dictating design and leaving barely any room for creativity. Bowman writes: Yes, it’s true [...]

Jan 16, 2009 - YouTube announced yesterday yet another way to access its videos on a TV: through the Sony Playstaion 3 (PS3) and Nintendo Wii. The service is now in beta but there are many other devices that can access complete versions today. YouTube has made several deals with set-top box manufacturers and TV manufacturers, releasing its first [...]

Jan 15, 2009 - Gary Hustwit brings us “a look at the creativity at work behind everything from toothbrushes to tech gadgets” with his new feature-length documentary film, Objectified. The film includes interviews with international visionaries and design leaders such as Jonathan Ive from Apple and Chris Bangle from BMW among others. “[The] film documents the creative processes of [...]

Dec 12, 2008 - It seems the Netvibes team has been busy. This week it announced support for greater customization for users and an expansion of its widget technology. For those of you that don’t know or don’t use Netvibes, it is a personalized homepage where you can follow your news, email accounts, blogs, social networks, etc. It is [...]

Sep 16, 2008 - It is a good thing that Facebook is slowly rolling out their new design; they might have had another huge revolt on their hands if they just threw it on their users. However, despite easing users into the new version, there is still a significant number of users that dislike the new experience and refuse [...]

Sep 2, 2008 - Google announced in a nifty way its new, soon-to-be-released open source browser, Chrome. Frankly, I am really looking forward to it based on the description they presented. It is clearly both an evolution of Mozilla’s own product, and a complete innovation. Google, staying true to their revolutionary core, threw away practically every existing model to [...]

Jul 23, 2008 - Last month Nokia published a document (PDF) that presents examples of good mobile design based on the interaction design, easy-of-use, and visual appeal of the products. The set includes: Gmail Jaiku Mobile Opera Mini New York Times Google Maps Yahoo! Go 3.0 Here are a few screen shots from the document: Although the analysis is quite subjective, I think the sampling is a [...]

Jul 21, 2008 - Today Facebook released a refreshed design of the site which includes some interaction enhancements for scanning profiles as well as managing your own profile. You can try out the new look at: www.new.facebook.com. The element I applaud the most is the prominence now given to the Wall. This is a great move, considering the stickiness of [...]