Ui on Afroleft

Questions to ask your design work

Tue, 29 Sep 2015 12:47:33 +0000

Last month I spent some time updating my portfolio. As a product / user experience / web designer, it can be quite tricky to present your work to others.

The rock star visual designers of this world can get away with presenting screenshots of their stunning visual work — job done, money due.

But if your day-to-day consists of making user flows, interaction designs, napkin wireframes, trade-offs, A/B tests, and minimum viable products, then you — like me — need to do a bit more groundwork to do the show and tell properly.

Same Same. But Different.

Fri, 01 May 2015 08:57:00 +0000

It’s Sunday, late morning, and I’m right in the middle of cleaning the bathroom. In the other room I hear a frustrated girlfriend struggling to find accommodation on - lets say - website X, for our trip to the Amalfi Coast.

Complaints flying left, right and centre, vented in a tone that kind of suggests that this is all my fault:

“Why won’t this?”
“It won’t let me!”
“I keep loosing my tab when I go to trip advisor for reviews!”
“I hate this”
“Why can’t it show me what’s available on the dates that we’re going”
“Oh FFS!”

…

Product Design Process

Mon, 09 Sep 2013 08:05:00 +0000

When we have a new product idea (and are lucky enough to have the skills and tools to execute on it), it’s often more than tempting to jump in with two feet and start building the thing. Before we know it, we’re pitching the hows before whys and problem solving becomes a battlefield of miscommunication. As a result, our product concept becomes more complex and less focused.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been investing a lot of time and energy into a product design process that we’ll be using for an upcoming project.

What’s next?

Sat, 03 Aug 2013 20:30:00 +0000

When we hit the bottom of your web page, what do you want us to do? Where should we go next? What are other people saying about this service? Should we get in touch with your team or look at the tech specs for this ground-breaking new product?

Too many websites fail to answer these simple questions.

Think about it: It’s a bit like visiting a supermarket with aisles that lead to dead ends. You either walk all the way back up the aisle, or you loose interest altogether and are forced to use the fire exit.

The Future of Interaction Design

Thu, 02 May 2013 19:39:00 +0000

Check out this video that sheds some light on what we can expect from the future of interaction design.

Lots of discussion around the ‘internet of things’ and how user experiences will become less intrusive and more natural as this area matures.

I guess this dovetails with my analogy that we’re moving further and further away from abstract computer interfaces. To piggyback on Luke Wroblewski’s paradigm, we can see where we’re heading by acknowledging the big interface developments:

Product Design: Extending the Metaphors

Mon, 07 May 2012 19:05:00 +0000

Around 2 years ago this August, Mikey, Sean and I began conceptualising our ideas for outheard.tv.

Our idea was quite simple; to create a website for sharing gig videos. On top of this, we wanted to group videos from events together – meaning you could browse up and down videos from the breathtaking gig you attended last weekend.

Quite quickly we realised that we’d need to ask users to tag the event in their video once they’d finish uploading it. The technology and function behind this decision was solid and worked brilliantly – upload your videos and tag them to the event.