User Experience Design Blog

Aug 17, 2009 - When people consider buying anything, whether it be clothes, a gadget, or home, they often spend a lot of time comparison shopping and trying to gather information to inform their choice. In fact, a major effort is generally exerted to try to experience the item: When shopping for shoes, we will put on one shoe and [...]

Aug 12, 2009 - Jonathan Hassell of BBC online shared a presentation on the challenges and methodologies of the company’s Usability & Accessibility team. The short presentation describes the challenges, such as a wide range of platforms and audience types, as well as the wide-range of research tools that are used to understand and address them, from card sorting [...]

Aug 12, 2009 - John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly recently published a fascinating white paper on the evolution of the Web (PDF). The report, titled Web Squared: Web 2.0 Five Years On gives an excellent analysis of the last five years of Web 2.0, current trends, and where the Web is heading in the future. Battelle and O’Riley write [...]

Aug 11, 2009 - Earlier this month Nokia Conversations posted a poll for the most important feature in a web browsing device and the results are in from 461 respondents. No surprise, the ‘all of the above’ choice was the top-rated feature, but following that were ‘big screen,’ and ‘high speed connectivity.’

Aug 4, 2009 - I flew on Lufthansa during a recent trip to Europe. Not only was it one of the nicest flying experiences that I have ever had, but it also turned out to be an opportunity to experience a very well-done interactive experience. Despite some shortcomings, Lufthansa’s touch screen entertainment application was a prime case study in [...]

Jul 14, 2009 - Netflix has been a trend-setter since it first entered the DVD rental scene with its big red envelopes in 1999. Since then, it has continued to push the envelope of what rentals should be: Engaging and easy to use web service which is continually being improved (and mimicked)

Jul 9, 2009 - This year’s batch of nominees for the Oops Award for Bad Product Design are truly exemplary. I highly encourage the reader to feast your eyes on some of the world’s biggest product design disasters. While most of the nominees have earned their spot in these echelons for aesthetic reasons, there are also some that are [...]

Jul 7, 2009 - The Web is abuzz with news that Google finally took its office suite, including Gmail, out of beta. Initially launched on April 1, 2004 as an invitation-only release, over five years have passed before Gmail finally graduated to a fully mature product. I would love to know the reasoning behind such an uncommonly long beta [...]

Jul 7, 2009 - LG ARENA won the IF Communication Design Award for the 3D S-Class User Interface featured on its latest handset, LG ARENA, which was awarded Gold in the Product Interfaces category. The interface, which won over all graphic user interfaces in several product categories, is used on LG’s other high-end phones, namely: Viewty Smart (LG-GC900), [...]

Jul 1, 2009 - On a recent trip, I was reminded of the illogical separation of the international and domestic terminals in airports. I, like many, have been confused as to where to go when flying overseas; if you have a stop-over in your origin country, do you go to the domestic terminal or to the international one? Why [...]