Category: Usability
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Ebb, Meet Flow: Intrinsic Design in a Nutshell
In 2020, the gifted makers of websites at Clearleft shared methods to achieve fluid responsive design. “Utopian” web design was (and still is) their half-kidding name for this approach, which Apple’s Jen Simmons, working indendently,…
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Web typography: a refresher and history
A refreshing dip into what we’ve learned about web typography over the past 20+ years.
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This Web of Ours, Revisited
Why did leading designers in 2000 look down their nose at the web? And are things any better today?
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CAPTCHA excludes disabled web users
The W3C explains how CAPTCHA excludes disabled users, and suggests alternatives that may be kinder and more reliable.
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In search of a digital town square
Ever since an infantile fascist billionaire (hereafter, the IFB) decided to turn Twitter over to the racially hostile anti-science set, folks who previously used that network daily to discuss and amplify topics they cared about…
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A faster horse
“The user is never wrong” means, when a user snags on a part of your UX that doesn’t work for her, she’s not making a mistake, she’s doing you a favor. To benefit from this…
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Healthcare in America
I’m one of the lucky ones. I have a great doctor and good health insurance. A boring generic healthcare company bought my longterm doctor’s group practice a few months ago. First thing they did was…
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Why don’t nonprofit sites convert?
Living in New York and working in media, I talk to nonprofit organizations a lot. Big or small, they all say the same. No matter how much work they put into their apps and websites,…
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Authoritative, Readable, Branded: Report from Poynter Design Challenge, Part 2
THIS year’s Poynter Digital Newspaper Design Challenge was an attempt by several designers and pundits, working and thinking in parallel, to save real news via design. In Part 1 of my report from Poynter, I discussed…
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Digital newspaper design challenge: a report from Poynter, part 1
CAN design create a better user experience that engages readers and drives revenue? Can it fight fake news and help save real journalism at a time when news organizations large and small are underfinanced and…
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To Save Real News
IN a world where newspapers are dying and half the public believes fake news, what online news experiences need is design that is branded, authoritative, and above all, readable: Branded, because we need to convert…
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In Defense of Font Size Widgets
Most of the sites we’ve designed in the past few years have not had a text size widget, but I believe this was due to our privileged assumptions and biases, and not to the reality…
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Do Not Go Gentle into that iTunes Store
AT HOME, sick with a cold and bored, my daughter buys a single packet of “My School Dance” in a freemium iTunes game. The manufacturer charges her (well, charges me) for ten packets. This same…
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Solve the Right Problem: Derek Featherstone on designing for extremes
12 LESSONS from An Event Apart San Francisco – ? 3: Derek Featherstone was the 10th speaker at An Event Apart San Francisco, which ended Wednesday. His session, Extreme Design, showed how creating great experiences…
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Measure Customer Time, Not Organization Time: Gerry McGovern
We need to manage speed on the page, not just the speed of the page load. Manage the customer’s time on task. We won’t become customer-centric until we change our metrics—focusing on customers’ time to…