UX in the wild: unsolicited design opinions
Good UX
Quip
After typing in a web url for a site I haven’t visited in over a year, I am faced with the dreaded choice… Sign in or sign up. Well, I will try signing in because I think I have made an account. Hmm, nope. That didn’t work. Maybe I used the wrong password… maybe I didn’t have an account at all. If the system can check the status of an account based on an email address then the system should do the work to figure it out up-front. Quip takes the onus on themselves to figure it out for you with a combined sign in/sign up CTA.
A banana a day at E-mart:
By Wednesday morning the bananas I bought during my weekly Saturday morning grocery trip are a little more ripe than I like. The bananas were perfect on Sunday and Monday, less ideal on Tuesday, and now, on Wednesday I am just forcing it down to escape the low-patience New Yorker that I turn into when I’m hangry. E-mart knows that their customers’ banana eating habits are typically that they eat a banana each day. But bunches of bananas all come at the same ripeness (duh) which means that by day 5 or 6 when you are ready to eat that last banana it’s typically beyond the point of ripeness that you’d enjoy eating it. A person can eat only so much banana bread. Enter: the one-a-day banana pack. The best fruit innovation since Buddha pears.
Android Pie Battery low notification
Instead of assuming a battery percentage means anything to me, The Android low battery notification gives me information about my battery life as it relates to my context. The copy suggests a time when my phone will die based on my usage patterns. The copy is really important here: the time marker can influence how a person might continue to use the device. “Based on your device usage” helps users understand that time estimate with added context.
Bad UX
Apple
The magic mouse from Apple is unusable while charging. When plugged in, there is no feedback on the device that it is charging or that it was even low on power to begin with. I’m alerted on the desktop when it has completely run out of charge but by that time it is too late.
Uniqlo
We’ve all hit that threshold where a company has sent us one too many marketing emails. We open it up, frustrated at the bold title in our inbox, scroll to the bottom of the message and search for the little blue link. Ugh. No blue link. Keep looking…. search for the word “unsubscribe”. When I recently got to this point with Uniqlo I clicked unsubscribe in the email but the messaging on the page I landed on was incongruous to my intent and emotional state at that point in time. Read the room Uniqlo…
Chase Reserve Travel Booking
The page’s loading animation was embedded as a video with user controls so the user can see the “pause animation” interface element. Too much transparency is not a good thing. It can cause confusion as there is no user benefit to controlling this animation.
Stay tuned for Vol. 2! The views represented in this post are solely my own and not those of any company or client I have worked for or currently work for.
