Skip to content

Instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

@lfinney
Created March 18, 2017 16:40
Show Gist options
  • Save lfinney/5e8796f03ce445402228659abd20b39a to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.
Save lfinney/5e8796f03ce445402228659abd20b39a to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.

And so it begins...

@lfinney
Copy link
Author

lfinney commented Jun 24, 2017

UX/UI

Psychology

The Dodo supports the question: How much work does the user have to do to get what they want? People have to do almost zero work to get what they want, in this case what people want is happy videos about animals. The landing literally greets users with a happy video of an animal. Success.

The RTD Pass Store does not leave a good response to this question. This website looks almost nothing like the main RTD website. When I first clicked it my first thought was that it was an attempt at phishing. Overall, this website does not inspire confidence.

Usability

The True Size supports the question: Are you being clear and direct, or is this a little too clever? At this website, user need to provide minimal input to get what they're after. It's simple and straightforward.

Wonder challenges a positive response to that question. The website seeks to help people research, but when a user types in their research question, they must continue to provide inputs to how they want to research. This website seemingly is trying to help people research, but seems to make it more complicated than necessary for someone who might struggle with research to begin with, hence why they're at this site in the first place.

Design

ESPN supports a positive response to the question: Do users think it looks good? Do they trust it immediately? From top to bottom, the ESPN website varies its elements to help guide the user to the content they want. This inspires confidence from the user as they can easily get what they want, whether it's scores at the top, specific sports leagues, or general news.

Spicy Basil, the Thai restaurant near my house, challenges a positive response to the question in question. Spicy Basil's website is informative, as it clearly displays the menu, but the design of the website does not inspire confidence from the user. The color scheme and lack of meaningful organization leave much to be desired.

Copywriting

Google immediately came to mind in regards to supporting the question: Is it clear, direct, simple, and functional? The Google landing page is simple and direct. It provides a simply search bar that delivers exactly what a user wants. If a user has a Google account, there are other options a user may exercise on this page, but those options don't interfere with the main purpose of the page, to search out information for the user.

Reddit, on the other hand, would not support a positive response to the above question. The landing page is quite busy and is difficult for a new user to navigate and understand. Inspiring confusion in a user leads to a build up of anxiety. To effectively use this page requires some time learn how it's organized and at some level, it works better with a third-party brower extension that makes the UI better.

Analysis

Netflix supports a positive response to the question: Are you using data to prove that you are right, or to learn the truth? As a user spends time on the website interacting with its content, the site delivers the user content it believes that user desires based upon how that user interacts with it. As users either view or don't view this content, Netflix will continue to refine its knowledge base on that user's preferences getting closer to the "truth."

The Denver Post challenges a positive response to this question. Contrary to Netflix, this site is likely only gleaning data from page clicks, which isn't the beset indicator to return information on their user's preferences. In this regard they can only tell what stories were popular, but have no data to indicate why those particular stories garnered interest.

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment