Category: UX
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Think about the entire customer experience
While I was ordering at a fast-food chain recently, I experienced a bad customer experience. The chain had implemented a new Point-of-Sale system which utilized a fingerprint reader for when the store manager might need to override a transaction. It was peak trading time and the franchise owner was hovering around front-of-house, I assumed to…
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Back to my future
Today I started my engine to travel along a new path. My passion for building software that solves problems was too strong to ignore and so today I join ThoughWorks to continue my quest to help the world by building better software. I’ve long been an advocate of Agile development practices, using it to improve…
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The path of least resistance
It’s become quite clear to me that the more I use technology, the more I just want it to work. Reliability and ease-of-use are extremely important factors for me. If I start my mail app, it must start quickly and it must immediately connect and send mail, without problems. It must also be clear and…
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Are you being loyal to your customers?
I love the concept of loyalty cards. I have a wad in my wallet and I make sure I use them religiously – saving money on something you’re going to buy anyway is a no-brainer. However, it’s important for both the customer and the vendor that the mechanics of the loyalty card are carefully considered.…
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Getting to grips with a new system
I was lucky enough to observe on-the-job user training this passed week. The best part of it was that the parties involved didn’t know that I was observing the interaction from a UX perspective and therefore it happened very naturally on their part. It was a David Attenborough moment. The system in question was a…
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The challenges creating virtual representations of physical layouts
The way that Apple represents a physical space in a virtual environment is really starting to bug me more and more. With the advent of IOS 7 and the heightened ability to see apps visually next to one another in a virtual space has made the need for a rethink more urgent. Switching between apps…
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From clumsy to graceful: interfacing in the age of ubiquitous computing
I’ve recently started reading Everywhere: The Dawning of the Age of Ubiquitous Computing It’s a collection of theses posturing on the forms, interfaces, implications of an era where computing power is woven into the fabric of our everyday existence. There are some interesting theories and examples in the book and although the author doesn’t try…
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Try not get in the way
Possibly one of the strangest and most annoying designs in iOS 6 is the notification overlay, as shown in the image above. Annoying, because one cannot get rid of it once it appears – one must wait a few seconds until it flips away, back into obscurity. Strange, because it doesn’t follow the conventions of…
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Get the basics right – address your users correctly
This is a rookie error. We all understand that a system will need to send out a number of automated notifications, but they should be as personalised as possible to carefully mask the fact that they were programatically generated. Using the format “[surname, first-name]” is extremely impersonal. No humans would communicate like this. Just call…