User Experience Design Blog

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 [...]

May 13, 2008 - Interview with UX Book Publisher Rosenfeld Media Last week, UX Matters interviewed Lou Rosenfeld, founder, and Liz Danico, Sr. Development Editor of Rosenfeld Media. The interview covers how the small publishing house hopes to confront the publishing industry, and reflects on the experience of bringing user experience design to publishing books–including show-and-tell sessions, testing readers with [...]

May 7, 2008 - “Simplicity isn’t a bad design goal; complexity isn’t a good one” Joshua Porter from UIE responds to Don Norman’s article, “Simplicity is Overrated.” Citing the work of Barry Schwartz, who writes on consumer behavior and trade-offs in “The Paradox of Choice,” Porter observes that users tend to choose more complex products not because they prefer complexity, [...]

Apr 29, 2008 - We all know the saying “too many cooks spoil the broth,” yet it is common during the design process for too many stakeholders to become design decision-makers. When reviews go beyond discussing issues in the user experience and gathering new information and ideas, stakeholders with varying points can sometimes begin to dictate the direction of [...]

Apr 22, 2008 - Design + Management: Want Respect? Smash the Table! Dan Saffer quotes a fall 2007 Design Observer article in his blog post about designers and their relationship with management. Although there may be a persistent desire on the part of designers to get a place at the management table “where the big decisions are made,” Saffer reminds [...]