Here’s a server error page that makes you feel good about the company or service.
It humanizes them. By that, I mean that it makes you feel that they have a sense of humor – and humility – and hopefully gets you to realize that there’s people behind the service; it’s not [...]
(Note: Here’s another guest post from Andreas Bossard, proprietor of the blog News of the Future and author of several excellent UsabilityBlog posts. Today he talks about his travails with the Paypal help system. Enjoy. -Paul)
I wanted to get help in Paypal, that’s why I clicked on “Help” and expected to see the help section [...]
Yesterday I posted about a discussion Jared Spool and I had about the import of the iPad.
I made the claim that the handset would continue to be the innovation driver, and as soon as it had the computing horsepower to drive a large LCD monitor and run productivity applications, it would be the primary and [...]
I really thought I’d be able to resist bloviating about the iPad. But then I read this tweet from Jared Spool:
Is nobody else talking about the iPad’s interesting facet? It brings the gap between phone & computer manufacturers closer together.
It got pushed to his Facebook as an update, where I flippantly responded:
And that’s a good [...]
Here’s the thing about LingsCars.com: It works.
Yes, it’s ugly as sin, an affront to the design sensibilities of practically everyone.
And this picture doesn’t do it justice. Go to the site, you need to see the seizure-inducing blinky-blinky.
But it works. It really does.
Let’s unpack that a bit. What do I mean when [...]
Old-school readers of UsabilityBlog may remember my (ranty but well-reasoned) diatribe against EULA’s and how they’re presented in software user interfaces. (Also check out my follow-up posts here and here.)
This picture I took the other day reminded me how easy it is to corrupt and degrade the user experience with obtuse [...]
Check it out now. Today. Go on, you know you want to. And here’s the scary thing: IT’S STILL BEING UPDATED REGULARLY. How scary/awesome is that?
Here’s the URL: http://www.Havenworks.com.
I should also post Ling’s Cars. I’ll get around to that this week. In the meantime, enjoy HavenWorks, and try not to have [...]
This is just a quick pointer to my latest UXmatters column, which is a follow-on to my article from September about the perils and pitfalls of testing your own designs.
In this follow-on, I revisited some of my more bombastic points about testing one’s own designs. Thanks to some excellent comments by several colleagues (and colleague-slash-wife), [...]
I’m putting an article together for UXmatters on the topic of usability testing and validating one’s own designs. My goal is to develop some guidelines for self-testing.
I’d love to get your feedback on some questions I have:
Testing your own designs: all-around bad idea? Or is it possible to do it well?
If so, what should you [...]
Let me be up-front about this from the beginning: this is a half-formed thought. But its implications are very, very interesting.
So here’s what just happened: I had a desire to take in some emerging thoughts in the user experience field. I wanted some fresh thinking, some exposure to new presentations.
For about 8 years, my first [...]
Found this on Digg.com today, and promptly added it to my “Questionable_Designs” set on Flickr.
What a great example of after-the-fact design modification.
It makes me wonder what the context was. Did someone set this up for a young child or an older relative? Or did they do it for themselves?
In any case, [...]
For some reason this slipped my mind for the last two weeks. On August 15th I delivered two talks at ProductCamp Austin 2009. Before I link you to the talks I wanted to give hat tips to the crew who put together this ProductCamp. It was a fantastic, energetic, and crowd-driven “un”conference, and I highly [...]
I know that as a professional user experience practitioner I should avoid angry rants, as they’re (mostly) unproductive.
But here’s the thing: I am PISSED OFF right now, I feel cheated and abused by this printer’s designers, and I have no real recourse except to call out the manufacturer and tell them [...]
Today I’m posting the presentation and source document from my UPA2009 presentation “A Kit For Building User Experience Teams in R&D Organizations.” The talk went very well; nearly everyone in the (somewhat small but whatever) audience spoke up and contributed.
Happily, when I posted links to this content on Twitter I got about a half-dozen retweets, [...]
I don’t know if this happens to all y’all, but I always have a hell of a time figuring out which button *opens* the elevator doors and which button *closes* them.
It happens every time I get in an elevator. Invariably, after I’ve already boarded someone runs to make the elevator before [...]
Just noticed a tweet pointing out this designer’s Flash homepage.
Creative? Undoubtedly yes. Also annoying and a bit nauseating.
I’m not going to get on a usability soapbox about this. It speaks for itself. And it? speaks a mixed message.
Hey, what can I say. Sometimes I’m on a tear and I write lofty big-picture conceptual pieces on the state of the user experience industry. Other times I can crank out an incisive, perceptive screed that absolutely devastates a design.
And still other times, you get this: a post about a garden [...]
Hat tip to Ghost in the Pixel’s Uday Gajender for putting together this well organized resource page. Nicely done.
And Whitney Quesenbery of WQUsability tweeted this UX toolkit-slash-process map, which I’m dutifully blogging here. Credit where it’s due: the page indicates that the toolkit was created by Bas Leurs, Peter Conradie, Joel Laumans, and Rosalieke Verboom [...]
Another example of how even tiny bits of bad design have real-world effects. I picked this one deliberately because it seems so small, yet affects the work satisfaction of about a half-dozen people and causes momentary consternation to countless hundreds every day.
Here’s the situation: this is a countertop drink fridge at [...]
