Cases. When Facebook first reached out to Kate Aronowitz in late 2008, the then-head of LinkedIn’s design team was pretty sure she didn’t want to move over to the social network. She was a new mom. Crazy startup hours were not part of her plan. A conversation with Facebook VP of product Chris Cox, however, changed her mind.
Cases. After a mere 6 months on the market, Google released their first major redesign of Google+. If you check your profile now, you should see the latest version. And if your taste is anything like ours, you’ll agree that it feels better in just about every way. Yes it’s on purpose.
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Cases. A paraphrased transcript of my talk at UX London 2012. Do you want to know what interests me about our industry? It’s the fact that we always talk about the importance of making mistakes, and iterating, and learning from our failures, but we never actually share real stories about our mistakes and failures. It’s this weird taboo. We’re obsessed with it – yet we never share the details.
Cases. It seems like every few weeks, we hear about a new field that falls under the umbrella of “design. ” Though it is a great time to be a designer, we are not taking full advantage of the learning and techniques that stem from other design fields.
Cases. When we first sat down with Tony Fadell, the CEO of Nest and the inventor of the Nest Learning Thermostat, we asked him what made Steve Jobs so great. Fadell is, perhaps, one of the best-qualified people on the planet to answer. He’s the one who first pitched the idea of an iTunes/iPod ecosystem. He’s the one who Steve Jobs hired to bring the iPod to life.
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Cases. With the Republican Party presidential primaries of 2012 fully underway, we decided to test the home pages of the Republican Party candidates: Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich. We focussed on the travel sector, banks and online retailers in previous cases, and we were excited to look into politics. The pages need to have a different appeal, which leads to different design decisions.
Cases. Last week, iTunes became home to a historical first. This time, in the form of an ingenious app that turns an iPhone into a gesture-based calculator that replaces the most common mathematical function keys with finger swipes. Rechner is the work of Berger & Föhr, a two-man studio based in Boulder, Colorado.
Cases. Designing for findability, usability, and brand reinforcement are basic requirements of web experience design. But the purpose of a website is not just to be found and admired. It's to generate leads, sales, and revenue. By using a conversion rate optimization process that tests UX and persuasion hypotheses, you can create pages that are proven to generate more revenue.
Cases. [Guest post by Jan-Christoph Zoels, senior-partner of Experientia] Avoiding one of the shortcomings of Oscar ceremonies, the international jury of the first Interaction design awards, selected a diverse range of winners from all over the world – from Ford’s smart speed gauge to a Dutch shopping application Ice Mobile to a Brazilian museums installation Interaction cubes.
Cases. In January 2012, The UK government launched a BETA version of the new website Gov. uk to replace the existing direct. gov. uk site.
Cases. Given that we love everything UX and design related, it must come as no surprise we are big fan of Smashing Magazine. Their choice of subjects is always spot on, and their articles show an impressive amount of attention to detail. They recently had their site redesigned, and the result is a beautiful, spacious site, designed from the typography out. I took a closer look at the new design and I’d like to discuss some of the findings with you.
Cases. Remember when you were five and you first learned how to make a shadow puppet of a dog by holding your palm in front of a flashlight and waggling your pinky finger? Making anything more complicated than that takes a lot of effort.
Cases. A pattern I have noticed on every project I’ve worked on is that the final design that clients use is always use is the one that’s simplest and most practical. By realizing that simplicity and practicality is eventually where things will end, designers can save an a lot of time and energy from creating many designs that clients will ultimately reject.
Cases. Great insights in the creation of Facebook’s latest feature. Read the entire article: Designers Behind Facebook Timeline: 5 Keys To Creating A UI With Soul. Nick Felton and Joey Flynn say that when creating a page to tell someone’s life story, you have to throw out the UI rulebook and study how people recount memories. Facebook’s Timeline wanted to do something more: It wanted to convey a feeling.
Cases. Here at Fluid, we love the iPad. We love all the possibilities it presents, and all of the amazing types of innovation it makes possible. Fortunately for us, our clients at Craftsman share that view. Coupled with a DIY ethos and a drive to do something really different, we went about designing and building Torque, the first shoppable iPad magazine for Craftsman.
Cases. I believe that the user experience of mobile newspaper websites can be greatly improved. Armed with feedback from a small remote user test of the mobile pages of two big newspapers, I want to explain why I think these sites fail in some key area’s, and make some suggestions for improvement. The USA Today and the Washington Post are both among the biggest newspapers in the United States.
Cases. Few industries are more global than the travel industry. Not only must travel and hospitality companies serve customers across a large number of countries and languages, they must do so across a wide range of mobile devices. As a result, many travel companies have invested heavily in globalizing their web and mobile experiences. This article focuses on a few of the leaders and provides lessons for any company planning to serve users around the world.
Cases. Back in January 2009, we published an article that received quite a bit of attention, The $300 Million Button. This article quickly became our most popular article and was often found on other web sites. The interest was around how a major retailer dramatically increased their e-commerce site’s revenues with a couple of simple changes. What’s really fascinating about this article is the back story.
Cases. NU. nl, the biggest news network in the Netherlands, redesigned it’s website this year. The main objective of the redesign was to improve the overall user experience and retaining the clear presentation of content, which the website is known for. One specific goal was to direct more visitors from the homepage to the content that the news network offers on different topics.
Cases. Do you want to know how you can improve the UX of your Facebook page? Customizing your Facebook page is a challenge because a big part of the design is already there. The limited insights that Facebook offers into your page statistics provide little evidence on which to base your design decisions. That’s why we conducted a remote usability test of the Facebook pages of eight of the world’s most popular brands.
Cases. Our friend Paras Chopra of Visual Website Optimizer published an interesting case study about Basekit (who is also one of our customers). The Basekit team wanted to increase conversion on their pricing page. They decided to create a new design to do a better job of motivating people to click the buy button.
Cases. People use automated teller machines (ATM) everyday all over the world. But some of these ATMs cause users to make errors that could cost them more than they can bargain for. Hundreds if not thousands of ATM users forget their credit cards at the ATMs in Argentina. Why? Because most users leave once they get their cash, and many ATMs give users their cash first before they get their credit card back.
Cases. Every day millions of people deal with their personal finances on the Internet. Banks have to tie a lot of systems together to make this possible, and simultaneously ensure that other information is easily accessible. There are a lot of details for banks to cover on a website: information about mortgages, credit cards, locations, insurances, loans, and much more.
Cases. Taking multitouch to the next level, Disney has released Appmates, small Hot Wheels-sized toys from the Pixar movie Cars, that physically interact with the multitouch screen on the iPad. The cars from Cars "drive" across the screen, with racing and other games reacting to the cars' movements.
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Cases. At Abtests.com you can find a growing collection of results from A/B test shared by fellow colleagues. Quite interesting to look through.
Cases. [ Transcript Available ] As we use a multitude of devices to access the same content, we expect a similar experience across platforms. If you have a great user experience on the desktop, it would be easy to rationalize that your mobile experience, for example, shouldn’t be painful. User experience professionals now need to consider how and where their applications and content are being accessed more than ever before. Bill Scott knows this.
Cases. Microsoft have just released a developer preview of Windows 8. Here’s an opening keynote video where the new OS is introduced. I’ve tried the developer preview and was left with some mixed feelings. The good One of the striking things about Windows 8 is the design direction Microsoft are taking with the new Metro UI.
Cases. By Simon White Published: September 7, 2011 “Everyone has to get on board for a new approach to work. ” It’s not easy to apply new methods, especially when there are old habits in place, making each stage in a process a novelty for stakeholders. Some people like novelty; some don’t. But everyone has to get on board for a new approach to work.
Cases. Today Microsoft posted a blog entry showcasing the new Windows Explorer interface. Long story short, the new Windows Explorer UI in Windows 8 will be based around the ribbon. Here’s what it looks like: Self-parody? I’ve been reading people’s comments on this and it’s not surprising that there’s already some backlash against the new design. I can’t blame them, the first impressions are: it’s heavy and noisy.
Cases. By Paul Bryan A review of Google's new iPad-based e-commerce product that bridges print and digital. Google Catalogs is a new iPad app that presents shoppers with a consistent user interface to a wide variety of retail catalogs.