"Customers, although they might be able to articulate the problems with an interaction, are not often capable of visualizing the solutions to those problems. Design is a specialized skill, just like programming. Programmers would never ask users to help them code; design problems should be treated no differently."
Alan Cooper
About Face 3, The Essentials of Interaction Design
thesixtyone, a Y-Combinator funded music exploration community, launched in early 2008. The service began life as a pretty typical web-based social networking site. Over the last couple of years, it has gone through some interface updates and improvements, but for the most part it seemed to toe the social network line with its user interface.
The image below shows the service immediately before the latest redesign. It was definitely clean, well organized, and functional. There are even some sweet keyboard shortcuts to make controlling the music easier!
Last week thesixtyone distinguished itself from the web's pile of music recommendation sites by completely redesigning their service. The new design is bold and immersive. While a song plays, the…
In the last few months here at Kristian Andersen + Associates, we have become increasingly more involved in iPhone application user experience/user interface design. Our existing experience with UX/UI design for the web was a great jumping-off point, plus we're all day-one iPhone users and are virtually tethered to them right throughout the day.
Our most recent app engagement began in the usual way, collaborating with the client on multiple rounds of wireframes and process maps, dialing in the inner workings and structure of the app itself. When we started to move forward into the initial visual prototypes the ideas for the navigation and overall aesthetic came fast, but we quickly realized something just didn't 'feel' right. It didn't take long before we realized why and just…
A few months back I revisited a favorite game of mine — Portal. Portal is an extension of Valve's Half-Life series. In it, the player controls the protagonist from a first person perspective (you know, a first person shooter…). You begin your adventure locked in a cell in some kind of testing environment/laboratory. After being released from the cell, you're directed through a series of increasingly complex puzzle situations in which your goal is to progress through one test chamber and move to the next. Here's where the "portal" comes in. The solutions to these puzzles require the use of a portal gun, which creates two interconnected portal ends. Here's Wikipedia's description of…
A curated collection of blog posts and web links that address branding, user experience, and interface design.
William Poundstone has written a great book on pricing practices called – Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value. For anyone interested in crafting brand experiences pricing strategies should be an area of deep study and reflection.
Lately we've been talking a lot about the elements of a successful design project. We thought it would be interesting, and helpful to other readers, to hear a bit more about other folk's successes and how they were achieved. Tell us about the client, the challenge, and the solution.
I recently listened to a lecture given by Architect Bjarke Ingels on TED.com, in which he talks about stories behind three projects that sought to act as physical and interactive environments.
I like his approach in storytelling, because it communicates that his work is more than just aesthetically compelling structures. In addition to being beautiful works of art, the buildings shown in his presentation are functionally conscious of space, resources, and culture. The last project he spoke of is, in my opinion, the most amazing. He and his team are focusing on the Island of Zira, using the seven neighboring mountain peaks of Azerbaijan as inspiration. They designed the land into an inhabitable urban eco-system, completely transforming it from…
Here’s the concept. You are presented with two movies at random, and you are then forced to decide which movie you prefer, no skipping allowed. If you haven’t seen one, or both, of the films, you can skip the film you haven’t seen and update the pairing. Flickchart then updates your list of favorites based upon your choices. Eventually, you’ll begin to build a massive and ranked list of movies you have seen.
If you happen to be presented with a tough matchup, Flickchart provides a forum for discussion on what made you decide between the two movies. Is Back to the Future better than Ghostbusters? Obviously it is, but here…
There's been plenty of iPhone sunshine-blowing, but the introduction of its touch-based UI really was a leap forward. I'm ready to see that kind of thinking applied in more circumstances. I work on, work with, and review a myriad user interfaces every week, and I find myself anxious to see more fresh and exciting approaches. I'm interested in moving beyond the "page." 15+ years into the web, and 5 years into web 2.0 and we're still using a metaphor that's hundreds of years old. We largely think of and experience the web in a linear fashion, even though it is in no way limited to that approach.
My thinking about this was jump-started when I stumbled across the online presentation tool Prezi. The best presentations are rarely linear, and Prezi breaks…
On a recent stock photo scavenger hunt (the bane of many a designer’s existence) I was reminded of the importance of providing feedback to users when they’re interacting with a system. After striking out at my standby sites, I decided to head over to Getty Images. I hadn’t purchased from their site in a while, let alone done any image searching there. I wasn’t surprised to discover that I had totally forgotten my password, or username, or both. I decided that my best option was to create a new account.
The Getty account setup form was short and well designed. What really made the experience for me, though, was that…
