User Experience Design Blog

Jul 3, 2008 - Based on this week’s talk of the rising importance of universal design, one may ponder whether this trend is actually real and to what extent it has manifested itself in daily life. Are products really easier and more accessible for everyone? Although I think the global trend is moving in the right direction for the most [...]

Jul 1, 2008 - Beth Tauke of uiGarden.net recently posted a pretty complete article on universal design’s rising momentum in the global marketplace. Admittedly, universal design has been around for over twenty years, but as the writer points out: “Recently, universal design has been cropping up in places in which it would have been unwelcome twenty years ago. The term [...]

Jun 26, 2008 - CNET has posted that it will be rolling out a new user experience design over the coming weeks. The new website will not only look different, but will contain modern interaction elements to simplify its pages while exposing more content. The main goals for the user experience redesign are to “make the site easier to [...]

Jun 23, 2008 - TechCrunch has posted a brief look inside Google’s Gmail usability lab along with some interesting pictures of the testing and observation rooms. One thing that I found interesting is the large monitor in the testing room–not a typical features in most testing set-ups. Other than that, it’s a pretty standard usability lab. Another thing worth [...]

Jun 19, 2008 - Mark Hurst of Good Experience writes an excellent review of Amazon’s Kindle product, which was released a few months ago. Among the pros, he cites: Easy pagination Fast delivery of books Cons mentioned include: Sub-par search capabilities Unclear upload tool Awkward button design (beyond “NEXT PAGE” and “PREV PAGE”) Illogical pricing models, particularly for internet content Disappointing out-of-the-box experience (no content pre-loaded after [...]

Jun 18, 2008 - MySpace finally cleaned up its act by launching a new, more elegant interface design. Mashable broke the story about a possible MySpace redesign on June 13 after images of the new interface design were leaked to Mark Hopkins. In the user experience sphere MySpace has often been cited as a paragon of bad design, and many [...]

Jun 10, 2008 - Input Structures for International Addresses Yesterday, Luke Wroblewski covered the intricacies of international address input structures for forms. After covering common layouts for American addresses and generic international formats, the article goes on to describe the variations within these constructs. One of the great points made by the article include the observation: Through years of experience with [...]

Jun 3, 2008 - Microsoft toots a vastly improved user experience as the cornerstone of Windows Vista. One look at the software maker’s marketing or Vista packaging reveals this constant, droning message; it almost seems that Microsoft tried to stuff all marketing collateral with the maximum number of various ways to say ‘easy’. Indeed, even the packaging was designed [...]

May 30, 2008 - According to the Business Week, Americans don’t visit the same web sites on their mobile devices as they do on their PC’s. Websites such as craigslist and eBay, ranked at number 1 and number 2 respectively, gain six or more spots in the mobile realm than on traditional devices. The article goes on to [...]

May 29, 2008 - In this past week’s issue of The Economist (May 17-23), the newspaper brilliantly provides an explanation of its homepage redesign. Not only is it fascinating to read the rationalizations behind the changes, but communication is a critical step often missed in major redesigns, and this also serves as a great example of how to effectively [...]