User Experience Design Blog

Mar 19, 2009 - The iPhone started a paradigm shift in mobile that led to a deluge of touch-screen devices, which differ only slightly in feature sets and overall experience. Marek Pawlowski of MEX writes a very detailed account how Palm went back to its ideological roots and to the blackboard to design a unique mobile device–the Pre. In [...]

Mar 19, 2009 - With all the talk of mobile phones and touch screen interfaces, it was nice to come across a fairly complete look at existing camera interfaces, which typically do not get much coverage. Gizmodo’s Matt Buchanan, not only gives a great “visual tour” of the top players in camera devices: Canon, Nikon, Sony, Panasonic, Casio, Olympus [...]

Mar 18, 2009 - This post about FedEx courier devices was just brilliant. I’ve often wondered about these onerous-looking contraptions, and how much training they must require. The mere look of them is not very enticing. Joe Pemberton’s recount of this encounter is a story to which we can all relate. How many times have we heard people gripe [...]

Feb 25, 2009 - Two user experience researchers share on the Google Blog how their team conducted eye-tracking studies on the interface of Universal Search to gain insight into optimal information design. They write in their post: Our User Experience Research team has found that people evaluate the search results page so quickly that they make most of their decisions [...]

Feb 17, 2009 - As seemingly everyone is moving toward working online, security concerns are being thrown to the wayside with troubling consequences. A recent occurrence at a hot start-up made me seriously think twice about how safe our online data is from malicious eyes. One of the main themes of Web 2.0 is the large-scale migration to the ‘cloud’. [...]

Feb 11, 2009 - A while back, Marissa Mayer of Google shared some very compelling research results at a Web 2.0 conference. In essence, she stated that an additional delay of 0.5 seconds to page-load time caused a 20% drop in traffic. Naturally, the first question that came to mind is whether this was an isolated case, or if [...]

Jan 26, 2009 - In these tough economic times, one reads of disappointing earnings and layoffs almost every day. Certainly, consumer electronics companies are not unaffected, and major players like Microsoft and Sony are seeing sales plummet and are cutting staff. However, there is one among them that is doing exceptionally well given the market conditions–Apple. Matt Burns over at [...]

Jan 19, 2009 - The BBC reports on a study conducted by Mformation, which reveals that of 4,000 people interviewed in the UK and US, 61% claim that “setting up a new handset is as challenging as moving bank accounts.” The report reveals other details of the complexity users face, such as using various applications, browsing the web, reading email, [...]

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 [...]