Adam Beizsley-Pycroft

User Experience Director at Natural Interaction based in lovely Bristol, England. I spend most of my day doing consultancy for other people but i've started work on a couple of products using the Lean Startup methodology. When i'm not making sites, apps and technology useful for non geeks, I love cooking, eating (both out in the many wonderful restaurants our city has to offer and stuff cooked by our foodie mates) and travelling the world in search of adventure and Heavy Metal. I'm now engaged to the beautiful, creative and infinitely patient Becca Babajee who I met at a Fear Factory gig 7 years ago. This is my attempt to collate things I post around the web (apart from Reddit, you're not getting my username out of me!) and perhaps write a few blog posts.

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Contemporist have pulled together some examples of David Trubridge's work. I especially like the different shapes he has created with lights. 

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PortKit - UX Metaphor Equivalents for iOS 6 and Android 4 - Kintek.com.au

This site shows the equivalent element in Android and iOS so you can ensure you use the right UI metaphor if you need to port an app from one platform to another without breaking the human interface guidelines. Hope they update it for iOS7. 

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The slides from my talk at SWUX last night are available on Slideshare: "Start user testing for less than £100" 

http://slidesha.re/15zIBjj

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I've uploaded the slides from my Bristol IT MegaMeet talk today to Slideshare: "Why user testing will make you happier" - http://www.slideshare.net/AdamBeizsleyPycroft/why-user-testing-will-make-you-happier 

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I love the design of these National Trust signs and the thought behind them. They're a creative play on the perceptions users of attractions have of the typical signage. 

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Designing for real world mobile use

Great article by one of my favourite designers, Luke Wroblewski. I like the proposal for providing a contextual "learning mode" the first time users perform an action so it's helpful rather than a barrier to them achieving their goals.

The research that indicated that 75% of interaction with smartphones is done using thumbs has massive implications for responsive design. Generally people are designing similar interfaces for smartphone and tablet users when tablet users generally hold the device using one hand and interact with the other - a completely different approach. 

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The first version of our new site is done! Still plenty more evolution is required but nice to have something better out there. 

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I intend to check this out next time i'm in that part of the world. 

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Yahoo will purchase Tumblr for $1.1 billion according to WSJ report

I'm not too upset about the prospect of Yahoo purchasing Tumblr. If we ignore the fact Yahoo have a history of purchasing companies, alienating their users then neglecting to evolve their user experience further this actually makes decent business sense. 

Perhaps the purchase of Tumblr will provoke some kind of Flickr renaissance too. There's clearly a large overlap between the target user bases for both sites and the two product teams could learn a great deal from eachother. 

For the first time in years I recently voluntarily started using a Yahoo product (their new iOS weather app) and I'm actually really satisfied which is rare given that I design sites and apps for a living - I can usually spot one or two holes.

I'm beginning to wonder whether Marissa Mayer is taking the company in the right direction. If we ignore her bizarre attitude to home working she seems to have introduced a real focus on improving several core products. It will be really interesting to see whether Yahoo (a company most people in the industry, including myself had written off as dead) will return to or even exceed the position it once held. 

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How Google Unified Its Products With A Humble Index Card

I've been really impressed with the progress Google have made on both User Experience and Visual Design recently. In my opinion, this is a much better example of how to implement the new "flat design' trend without  compromising on the UX. Unlike Windows 8's TIFKAM (The interface formally known as Metro) it's clear which elements are static, which can be interacted with and there's consistency of behaviour between the "cards". 

It will be interesting to see whether they bring this approach to the Android UI (which is frankly a mess of conflicting principles) and how it compares to iOS7.

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Three ideas that convert better than a standard carousel

I love this article, carousels are over used, often don't user test well and a great example of portfolio-centred rather than user-centred design. (In many cases, obviously there are some scenarios where they make sense)

I've recently been encouraging clients to include a couple of lines of large static text summing up what their products are with a call to action button at the top of their site (below the nav) with pretty decent results so far.

As always, test these ideas with your own users rather than just accepting recommendations from experts as gospel. 

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Espresso down, Mocha to go at Spicer and Cole Bristol

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It's interesting to see how infinite scrolling has evolved as an interaction pattern recently. I think that the suggestions in this article are a step in the right direction but this is something which should be throughly user tested on a project by project basis.