Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Study Introduction: A case study was commissioned to review the impact of user experience (UX) design in a galaxy far, far away. This appears to be a period full of technological wonder with faster-than-light space travel, advanced life-saving technology as well as advanced weaponry. However, systematic design mistakes also proliferate. For example, pressure (literally choking…
Last year, San Francisco released BART Watch, an app for reporting crimes on the Bay Area’s main transit system. After filing a California Public Records Act request to see what people were reporting, the East Bay Express found a disturbing pattern: Of the 763 alerts sent to BART, 198 included a description of the race…
July 10, 2015 Donald trawls Google Fonts for ten minutes. There are a few candidates, but Don’s not so confident in his font evaluation skills. He lands on Open Sans. Good ol’ faithful. He sets the actionable headline text to 48pt using the light weight in white. It’s perfectly centred over the stock photo of…
Spotify quietly changed the tone of its green last month and it drove people insane, wondering if they were imagining it or if something was wrong with their phones. The company’s lead designer, Tobias van Schneider, wrote in his personal email newsletter today what happened when the company changed the color and how it didn’t realize…
How We Changed the Facebook Friends Icon Facebook headquarters is an amazing place. The snacks are free, the sun always shines and everyone is full of the best intentions. During my first week I encountered hundreds of people earnestly trying to make the world a better place. I also foresaw how easy it would be…
Safari Content Blocker, Before and After Wednesday, 8 July 2015 Dean Murphy wrote an iOS 9 Safari Content Blocker, and tested it against iMore: With no content blocked, there are 38 third party scripts (scripts not hosted on the host domain) running when the homepage is opened, which takes a total of 11 seconds. Some of…
Oh lord, Seamless. Do you want me to starve to death? That’s what a lot of people have been asking themselves since the popular food delivery service rolled out a dramatic redesign a few weeks ago. Nothing is where it was before. The new interface’s huge elements feels like a prison of clutter compared to…
So, we’ve been messing around a lot with Google’s A/B testing tools on our website lately. Like, a lot. This toolset allows us to “test-drive” alternative versions of our site for a select audience of live customers, and see which option puts more money in the bank. I like A/B testing. It paid for our…
WSJ Homepage Redesign Process Work As part of the WSJ.com site redesign, our process involved figuring out a new responsive grid, a new editorial strategy and an overall rebrand. The ultimate goals were to simplify and increase time on site. [if (lt IE 9) & (!IEMobile)]> < ![endif] One of the initial things we did…
paging_filterThe Wall Street Journal will roll out its new website on April 21, marking the paper’s first online redesign in seven years, and it will launch a news application for the Apple Watch when the device becomes available on April 24. The long-awaited overhaul will refurbish wsj.com’s outdated, text-heavy look with cleaner navigation, sharper graphics…