UX in the wild

Hailo sailor

UXITW — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 18:35:50 +0000

The Hailo app is very cool if you take taxis a lot and don’t like to carry cash. The app is simple and really useful.

I noticed the other day that I accidentally tipped a driver 15% (in Ireland) because the interface lured me into doing it. In short I was playing with the smiley faces on the auto tip interfaces on the way home winding down after a heavy day. I accidentally left the second smiley face active and accidentally tipped a driver. Nice one Hailo.

No mobile website = big usability problem

UXITW — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 07:18:32 +0000

I did a quick survey of the obvious Irish, UK and US mobile operators and was amazed to find that sweet f**k all of them have a proper mobile optimised website. The irony of a mobile solutions provider with no mobile site is not lost on me (insert appropriate analogy here, it’s too early in the morning for me).

Not good enough. I write a lot of usability reports in my job. I now state in these reports that having no mobile site is a serious usability issue. Just go look at your analytics stats to see the volume of people trying to access your content from a handset.

The mobile web is not difficult to design or develop for. Lack of a mobile site is symptomatic of a regressive organisation with no agility or vision. It is a pain ... Read More »

27 mobile guidelines from Apple

UXITW — Mon, 21 May 2012 06:57:52 +0000

Nice set of guidelines from Apple on mobile design and development.

Focus on the Primary Task

Elevate the Content that People Care About

Think Top Down

Give People a Logical Path to Follow

Make Usage Easy and Obvious

Use User-Centric Terminology

Minimise the Effort Required for User Input

Downplay File-Handling Operations

Enable Collaboration and Connectedness

De-emphasise Settings

Brand Appropriately

Make Search Quick and Rewarding

Entice and Inform with a Well-Written Description

Be Succinct

Use UI Elements Consistently

Consider Adding Physicality and Realism

Delight People with Stunning Graphics

Handle Orientation Changes

Make Targets Fingertip-Size

Use Subtle Animation to Communicate Support Gestures Appropriately

Ask People to Save Only When Necessary

Make Modal Tasks Occasional and Simple

Start Instantly

Always Be Prepared to Stop

Don’t Quit Programmatically

If Necessary, Display a License Agreement or Disclaimer

No excuses – Bootstrap from Twitter

UXITW — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 20:58:59 +0000

Passed on to me from the lovely Peter McKenna at Swrve in response to a ghostwritten iQ blog called Mobile Thursdays: Design patterns a-go-go.

http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/

This is a really well executed framework from the team at Twitter, of lightweight HTML, CSS and Javascript built on a 12 column responsive grid (fixed and liquid) available to use for free. There are lots of JS plugins available for you to create dropdowns, popovers, carousels and many more.

You can customise and extend the framework with LESS a powerful lightweight dynamic style sheet language. This allows you to set variables or to perform operations within your code to get uber creative with what you can do or to simply save on repetition and bloated CSS. You can read more about it here http://lesscss.org/ and here on Smashing ... Read More »

Live Dead Houligram on tour?

UXITW — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 17:41:52 +0000

Tupac Shakur the 15 years dead rapper may be going on tour sometime soon. This is ‘live’ footage from the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in California three days ago. Do you think its bad taste or a novel idea? Imagine seeing Elvis doing his thing in Vegas or Freddie doing Live Aid again or Jimi Hendrix setting his guitar on fire. I suspect the idea could get very tired very quickly and prove a little disrespectful to the artist and bad taste to the fans.

Who would you like to see performing from beyond the grave?

Catholics Online – Preaching the E.pistle to the App.ostles

UXITW — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 15:02:12 +0000

In USA Today I stumbled upon a headline that read “Church outreach takes on new technical touch”. This was a summary of how people of faith are embracing digital media to spread the word of their respective orthodoxy. Everything from churches marketing with stylized QR codes, Facebook pages, Web TV channels, Twitter accounts, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association using search algorithms to steer people towards salvation. Seems like the religious are employing a variety of digital media these days to spread the good word.

Ever since Gutenberg published the first 180 moveabley typed and printed bibles on his special bible printing press the notion that technology could get the message to the masses started to stick. It was also quite a lucrative gig for the printer. One of the major profit-making enterprises of this new press was also the printing of thousands of indulgences for the church. Suffice to ... Read More »

Enhancing the service experience – lets start with LodgeNet

UXITW — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 23:58:38 +0000

We checked into the Hilton Garden Inn in Fort Collins Colorado the other day. Checking in was scripted in typical American hospitality vernacular; efficient, polite, welcoming and unsettlingly friendly (for an irish person) “…you have yourself an amazingly awesome great evening now sir” (shiver).

Anyways all that aside we got to our room which had all the mod cons required for a lengthy stay. I don’t know about you but after unpacking I normally end up wrestling with the TV trying to figure out what does what. The remote control is always completely different and the interface presented on the TV is more often than not worse than anything the dark ages of the web could throw at you.

This time however after pressing the power button an advertisement popped up on the screen telling me to go to the appstore ... Read More »

When is a city not a city?

UXITW — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 03:24:43 +0000

Well that depends on who’s been dicking around with the Irish instance of the Groupon content management system..

Stop with the ratings screens already

UXITW — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 02:47:46 +0000

Just stop it. I’m not going to the app store to give you a star rating or write a review. Its a big turn off.

App ratings are bullshit city my friends. Nice one from wunderlist below – they have no idea what I do with their app specifically that I dont use it at all.

Hertz are driving in-store customer experience

UXITW — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 14:32:10 +0000

We collected our car yesterday from Hertz in Denver, CO after a grueling 9 hour flight from London. We took a Hertz coach to their office, our bags were even loaded on by a driver who welcomed us to Colorado. As we walked in the door of the Hertz office a very happy lady approached us and said she had a representative available in Phoenix to talk to us. Phoenix? Arizona? “Yes” she said “come with me he’s online right now”.

She took us to an area of the office with a row of machines similar to ATMs, the only noticeable differences being the large video monitor and video camera on each machine. She dialed us in to the system and a very friendly sales representative called Mark popped up on screen and introduced himself. He proceeded to walk us seamlessly through our car rental. ... Read More »