roger, wilco.
User goals, mobile limitations and existing functionality
+Mobile +User Experience on 1 June, 2010
Reading this excellent article over at UXMatters, I was pleased so much to read this
Putting users’ goals first allows a design team to concentrate on the new opportunities a mobile application presents rather than seeing the challenges of mobile simply as barriers to implementing a Web application’s existing functionality.
So much so that I thought it worthy to put here… After many months of zero activity.
So nice to see someone efficiently articulate what I’ve tried to communicate on a few mobile projects now - please, put your desktop context away.
It takes a true optimist to see opportunities, not limitations - brilliant!
I’ll be the first to admit that this is more optimistic than I’ve ever been able to be, but now I have something to aspire to.
Making Roger Wilco Better, Again.
+System +User Experience on 21 April, 2009
Topics and Archives have been added. This was overdue - not surprisingly, the superceded single page design (showing bulk posts across multiple non-related topics) was not really cutting it, info design wise. In part, this is why I’ve been silent on Roger Wilco for the last few months. It was just too hard to represent different interests in a single place. I’m still a bit confused as to what Roger Wilco is. After all, it never was that clearly defined
This site was born in July 2008 and is home to, well, anything I want - really. That probably means a varied collection of interesting articles from other smart folk and brief commentary on anything that takes my fancy.
Over time it’s become a weird intersection of design and user experience meets technical and analytical topics while the dudes at the back of class talk about film, music and stuff they saw down the street.
That’s working for me, and maybe topics and archives can make it work for you too.
Advertising & User Experience make friends at MySpace
+Observations +User Experience on 23 September, 2008
The enduring friction between advertising (more clicks) and
useful design (fewer clicks) has been solved by MySpace’s
strategy of trading homepage ad clutter into one Hero Ad.
Fiona Ingram - Sensis UX Blog
Full article at Adaptive Path
Nice domain. Error handling - not so much.
+User Experience on 6 August, 2008
Stumbled across this corker error message after following a (broken) link via Google alert.
source: Pantsland
Google’s Design Principles
+User Experience on 29 July, 2008 { source }
The Google User Experience team aims to create designs that are useful, fast, simple, engaging, innovative, universal, profitable, beautiful, trustworthy, and personable.
To achieve these aspirations and achieve that ‘Googley’ experience, they suggest a balance of these principles:
- Focus on people – their lives, their work, their dreams.
- Every millisecond counts.
- Simplicity is powerful.
- Engage beginners and attract experts.
- Dare to innovate.
- Design for the world.
- Plan for today’s and tomorrow’s business.
- Delight the eye without distracting the mind.
- Be worthy of people’s trust.
- Add a human touch.
I’m fond of ‘Simplicity is powerful‘, on which they go on to say:-
Simplicity fuels many elements of good design, including ease of use, speed, visual appeal, and accessibility. But simplicity starts with the design of a product’s fundamental functions. Google doesn’t set out to create feature-rich products; our best designs include only the features that people need to accomplish their goals. Ideally, even products that require large feature sets and complex visual designs appear to be simple as well as powerful.
Also, their ethos on balancing business needs (i.e. making money) with user goals in ‘Plan for today’s and tomorrow’s business’ makes me warm inside.
Those Google products that make money strive to do so in a way that is helpful to users. To reach that lofty goal, designers work with product teams to ensure that business considerations integrate seamlessly with the goals of users. Teams work to make sure ads are relevant, useful, and clearly identifiable as ads. Google also takes care to protect the interests of advertisers and others who depend on Google for their livelihood.
Google never tries to increase revenue from a product if it would mean reducing the number of Google users in the future. If a profitable design doesn’t please users, it’s time to go back to the drawing board. Not every product has to make money, and none should be bad for business.