Don't Make Crap
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Hamburgers & Basements: Why Not to Use Left Nav Flyouts
“Good design makes a product understandable” – Dieter Rams
Good navigation should do at least three things well: (1) it should allow the user to navigate; (2) it should serve as wayfinding, letting the user know where they are; and (3) it should help the user understand what the product is capable of. If your navigation is not doing these three things, something’s wrong.
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- profile page: press the three vertical dots in the top right corner to open the options
- photo page: press the three horizontal dots in the bottom right corner to open the options (optional: turn head 90 degrees and the dots appear vertical! they still open the options too!)
Here is my proof that iconography is important. Case in point, look at this post on Instagram’s horizontal dots. Horizontal dots are the new Hamburger Icon:
Biggest mobile UI trend of 2012: hamburger icon that slides open the basement (sidebar).
Bro, UX harder. Instagram turns the icon, places it in different locations, and definitely confuses the user. The user shouldn’t have to hope that the button does the same thing it normally does. The user should be confident that your icons are consistent. Keep it simple stupid.
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ok everyone, open the program with the ‘p’ icon
which one?
the green one
which green one?
the one with the open folder icon thingy
which one?
actually I’m not sure, lemme check(double points for colorblindedness)
Iconography is important. If you had to explain your software to your grandma, how would you do it! Would you say “Click the clipboard button”? Make sure the clipboard icon doesn’t look like any other icon. This can cause confusion even for pro users who learn to associate a certain function with an icon, but may accidentally click another icon if they look similar at first glance.
People know certain icons. Defaults like sharing, deleting, copying and others are burned in a users brain thanks to other apps. Stick with the norms when you can and only introduce unique icons if you have to.
Icons can make or break a great product.
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Jason Shah: Mailbox UX: How Mailbox Builds User Love Mailbox pushes the envelope (get it?) for apps aiming to make email sane. It is a brand new email client based on mobile gestures aiming to make email suck less and help you get to Inbox Zero. Mailbox been called “the best email management app you’ll ever use.”
Meet Mailbox from Mailbox on Vimeo.
Jason Shah does an excellent job of describing the value of Mailbox. After using Mailbox, I completely agree. The feeling of having your mailbox empty is excellent and calming. The power of setting timed reminders to bring email into your inbox only when you need it, is awesome. The clean UI makes composing and organizing email an excellent experience. It is a new product and takes some getting used to, but it is more than worth it.
I don’t think there is much debate on whether Mailbox is a nice product, but many have other critiques. As you may know, Mailbox implemented a queued reservation system to progressively allow users access to the Mailbox service. Mailbox provides certain backend services that need to be scaled to the user demand. Many accuse Mailbox of trying to create some sort of marketing hype for the app with their queue system.
People complained that the reservation system didn’t work properly and the product wasn’t that unique:
http://www.everythingzoomer.com/mailbox-app-reservation-worst-launch-ever
Mailbox is simply a tool. A very nice one, a well-designed one. I like it. But it’s just a tool and a blunt one at that. No app will save you from e-mail. You can’t swipe and sort your way to a better you, no matter how long the line is.
I realized that the Mailbox team are truly out to do something different. You see, you can’t fix a problem, beat a company, or even move an idea forward by simply duplicating and reskinning what already exists.
And, while I look forward to being allowedto use their Mailbox application, what I really look forward to is when Google writes the few lines of code necessary to provide that functionality to my existing proprietary Gmail app.
And this is what Orchestra Inc. doesn’t seem to get. They are not a company or a product — they are a feature.
I can’t see millions of people switching over to Mailbox. But I can see Apple or Google buying Orchestra, or copying Mailbox’s features.
I do love Mailbox, and they’ll get past these scaling issues, I’m sure. But I’m less bullish on their their true long-term potential. They had an absolutely incredible launch, but at what cost?
In general, I hope that startups and companies are more comfortable with charging for the value their services provide their users going forward. Otherwise I’m going to begin having a real distrust in these services that I rely on daily.
I reference all of these opinions to show that while Mailbox is a beautiful AND useful product, some parts of the Mailbox experience aren’t perfect. People want to pay for great software without having their personal info sold or used for ads. People want confidence that if they start relying on your product that you won’t get acquired and disappear (i.e. Sparrow). People would rather pay for a premium product or be able to pay to get to the front of the line. A queue system may be a fun marketing gimmick and can attract some attention, but it doesn’t necessarily instill confidence in users. A company can instill confidence by demonstrating that they have a business plan and the engineering talent to scale and handle problems.
Mailbox is far from crap, and I think it is an excellent product. Give it a chance and we can all watch and see what it becomes. I, for one, hope they can continue to move email forward.
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“No, but ask me again every time.” Brilliance from xkcd
Many of you may have seen this bit of humor from XKCD, but this is no laughing matter. Sites across the web are limiting their usability and are starting a dangerous trend.
I believe this trend is being perpetrated by “growth hackers” that are trying to squeeze the site’s existing traffic to achieve the highest engagement numbers. The thought is that if a user finds Quora through a search engine or social media link on mobile web, the user should be prompted to download the app. Users who have downloaded the app are more likely to consistently use Quora and will create more UGC and increase engagement numbers.
This is not inherently a bad idea, but crippling the user experience of a mobile website to get downloads is a terrible idea.
An excellent critique of Quora’s choice to cripple the mobile web was written by Scott Hanselman. I’ll quote Scott to solidify why Quora’s choices specifically are crap.
Check out any Quora answer while on a mobile device not logged in. See that scroll bar there? The entire page actually loaded. I can scroll around! The white area is on top, blocking the content.
Don’t believe me? Gobsmacked? Here’s a screenshot of a View Source from my iPhone of this page. Sure the markup is really awful, but squint and you can see the content is there. All of it.
I love thatmy mobile data plan was used to download the full contents of a page that I’m not able to see.
No, I don’t want your app. I want to use the web my way. You’re not doing it right, therefore I reject you. You need to change your ways.
Yes, it’s your prerogative on how you want to run your website, but I propose that just like ExpertsExchange and others before you, the open web will reject your chicanery.
I said Good Day Sir!
That was a bit lengthy, but you get the picture. Quora is still downloading all its content and answers, but won’t allow users to see them. They want to force users to operate the site their way. This strategy might encourage growth initially, but this strategy is already bothering many users and will most likely cause Quora to lose users.
Apps have their place, but users should be able to have an equally good experience using your site purely through mobile Safari or any other browser. While Quora is obviously a free service and can do as they please, it will not serve them well in the long run. True growth hackers are concerned with giving their community a great experience and making sure users can truly and fully USE the site. If you want to grow your site, listen to your community and respond, don’t force them to use your site a certain way to get certain engagement metrics up.
As an app developer myself, I believe that apps have an important place in society. They should have an independent value that is unique from the mobile web experience. If we make apps that are just copies of the mobile web, or provide minimal additional value, we are just frustrating customers. Make sure you create great mobile web experience and great native app experiences. Don’t sacrifice the usability of one to “grow” the other.
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Citysearch 6.0 
Try the new Citysearch App here
Business Insider did a nice write up about a recent release of Citysearch’s iPhone App. Now, I have a little bit of a bias here since I do work at CityGrid Media, where this app was developed. However, I had nothing to do with this specific redesign and I have not been working on this app for this release.
Now with that being said, I actually am sort of excited about this release of Citysearch. Competing with Yelp, Foursquare, Google, and others is hard. Popular opinion is not with Citysearch, and hasn’t been since before Yelp became a dominant player.
Wow, I would have guessed that Citysearch, insiderpages and merchantcircle were out of business. 3 sites that take up space and have 0 value
The team at CityGrid is trying to change public opinion and produce products with true consumer value.
The recent 6.0 release has been well received and the average review score has gone from 2.5 stars previously, to 5 stars based on recent ratings.
I am excited to see Citysearch taking new steps with design and focusing on expert content as opposed to just making another way to search for businesses. The so-lo-mo ”social local mobile” space is really crowded, but there are still many ways to innovate. I hope that Citysearch can position itself as a great way for consumers to discover new businesses and communicate with the businesses they already use. Google, Yelp, Foursquare and others make it difficult to compete in the local space, but I think we are seeing the beginning of Citysearch creating new and unique value for businesses and customers.
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My buddy Brendan spent much of last year working with Skinny Ties, helping them to redefine their “creative and technical direction to propel shopping on every device”. He did an amazing job with the redesign (before | after), whilst also concentrating on adapting the site to perform great on all devices.
Brendan did a nice write up of his strategy which included these amazing numbers that back up the advantages of a cohesive, well-planned and well-designed cross-platform experience. Well played sir, well played.
An excellent example of taking an existing business and bringing its design up to speed and seeing real profit increases. Design can take a decent ecommerce site and make it an excellent experience. Design can improve profits and increase user interaction. This shows why it is important and how to do it right. Check out the before and after shots, the stats, and then read his write up to get some great inspiration.
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Nice overview video about interaction design produced by Microsoft and featured on Fast Code Design. It talks about what Interaction Design used to be and where it’s going. The future predictions are exciting to think about, but it’s actually the early discussion about the importance of humans and human connections to interaction design that resonated with me the most.
An excellent video if you have time to watch (18 mins) explaining how humans factor into our product designs.
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StackExchange Founder Vows to Reinvent Online Discourse Atwood has renewed his crusade with Discourse, an open source application for building online message boards that he hopes will become as ubiquitous as WordPress. Complaining that forum software hasn’t changed in the past 10 years, Atwood and his co-founders Robin Ward and Sam Saffron set out to re-imagine what forum software should look like.
via Wired.com
Jeff Atwood has long been a pioneer of truly usable and useful software. His project StackOverflow saved the web from the ugly and difficult forums of yesteryear. Discourse is an open and freely available way to provide true discussion online in a friendly and effective way.
The UI in discourse is gorgeous and the app is extremely nice to use. I hope to see every small forum and q/a site replaced with this ASAP!
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Progressive Reduction
I’m very excited to talk about a technique that we’ve started using at LayerVault. We call it Progressive Reduction.
Progressive Reduction is an awesome concept that involves simplifying the user interface as a user becomes more experienced. Most often, a user needs a little time to get used to a new UI. Certain buttons aren’t obvious and the user hasn’t memorized the processes involved in using your app. Layer Vault decreases how obvious the UI is as the user becomes more experienced.
The app starts out with all the buttons including text labels and other helpful elements that make it easy to use. As the user begins to memorize what buttons do, the buttons become less and less obvious and remove text labels. This allows the interface to become less “in your face”, and allow it to become an easy tool. This is an awesome technique to allow your user interface to respond to the experience of your user.
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