UX nerd

After analyzing the results from the survey, we decided to create a concept that would afford piler and filer styles. We had to create a 3 minute video and a prototype. I think I’ll post the prototype, for which we made a comic, just because we had to scrape so much off the concept to make it to the required video length that I don’t think the video does a great job portraying the idea :S

I would have preferred to have a working mock up, but as we were all doing this as a side project and we had so many features, this proved impossible. So a comic had to do.  Should we have done something simpler which was easier to convey? Well, time was a constraint, there were no clear guidelines, no client, nothing at stake, so I think we just indulged: it’s a lot more fun to develop an idea than a prototype. And even if the philosophy behind the group of features we presented wasn’t explicit and we could be accused of lack of cohesion, the audience were experts in the industry, we expected them to be knowledgeable enough and trend-aware enough to put the pieces together and see the concept behind :)

You can see the prototype here.

This post has been in my drafts for a long time, it looked like I’d never get around to finishing it. Probably it was because the design of a remote control for the elderly is not my favorite subject. However, I really enjoyed working on this project and I think we got a neat result, and a quite original one if you think of how many remote controls for the elderly are already in the market. Also, I didn’t want to omit this project because to me it shows how there’s still room for substantial improvement even in long standing commercial product ranges, and how you wouldn’t even think there’s something wrong until you introduce a UX designer and then it seems unbelievable that no one came up with these simple but life changing tweaks sooner. And, no, it’s not about boosting our egos, it’s about bursting those of the people who think they can do without us :P

I worked on this project, some time ago, with Wenzhu, Valentina, Paulo. When I was told we had to design a remote control for elderly people, I googled it, and then sighed. Usually I try to avoid the “yet another…” projects but this time it was not up to us, so I set to work thinking at least that socially it was quite a relevant project. Actually I learned that most developed countries have around 10% 65+ people (I knew it was a lot, but 10% is mind blowing) and that they watch TV an average of 3,5 hours a day, so it makes sense to want to adapt remote controls for their especial use. Continue reading ‘Design of a remote control for elderly people’

Around a month ago, I got to do my first solo project. With great power comes great responsibility and, luckily, the ability to choose the subject that better suits my interests :) And this is how I embarked on the redesign of browser error messages.

Browsers are old. It’s weird. I would have thought that major industry players would have figured out this kind of core issues by now. Error messages are not about new or experimental interactions, their design is probably as linked to basic UX design principles as can be. That’s why I was startled when I started to get the answers to my questionnaire… users mistaking DNS errors with HTTP 403 response codes and attributing SSL certificate warnings to malware. There’s a lot of educated talk on the web about how bad some error messages are, these however are savvy users’ rants and none of them come close to describing how the average users misses on their web experience, one of my participants even describing the experience as “distressing” :S

Anyway, after a week of questionnaires, qualitative analyses, guideline drafting and prototyping, I came to understand why error message design is not a popular discipline and some other interesting conclusions.

Continue reading ‘Browser error message redesign’