Jesse LN Smith

A Journey Into UX

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First Day of Class

Oh hey - it’s the first day of class here are General Assembly and we already have presents! 

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Good UX: Anticipating User Needs

Perhaps one of the best ways to please me as a user is to anticipate and accommodate my needs before I even realized they exist. 

This morning while foraging for breakfast on the food delivery ass Seamless, I came across this gem in the “Daily Specials” of one of the top-rated restaurants in my neighborhood. 

The guys over at Anthony & Son Panini Shoppe, here in Williamsburg make delicious, hearty food and fully recognize that someone looking at their menu on a Sunday morning may very likely be suffering from a massive hangover and in need of hydration and pain relievers, in addition to sustenance. 

While I am currently not recovering from any kind of overindulgence, this is definitely something I’ll be keeping in mind the next time I am. 

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Science deals in truth. Practice deals with approximations.

Don Norman from “The Design of Everyday Things”

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Good UX: Creative Badges in CARROT Hunger

I recently came across the CARROT Hunger app, and was initially intrigued by the diet app’s use of sarcasm and negative reinforcement as motivational tools.

The app even employs a feature they have dubbed “Auto-Shaming”, that accesses your Twitter account and sends out an announcement tweet every time you go over your designated calorie limit for the day.

I don’t know if I’m ready for the world to hear about my over-eating exploits just yet, but I can see how this might be appealing to some people.

However, the especially creative UX that I appreciate from this app doesn’t have to do with negging or sarcasm. Rather, it is CARROT’s creative use of iOS badges.

As a quick primer, because admittedly, I didn’t know the term “badge” before having to look the feature up online, here is the definition of a “badge” from the official Apple iOS developer guidelines:

Until reading this, I had just been referring to those red bubbles as “notifications”.

Anyways, after inputting my breakfast (Raisin Bran and coffee, in case you were wondering) I closed out the app only to be startled by the fact that I had 370 notifications to deal with. “How could I have 370 things suddenly added to my to-do list??” was my first reaction.

But then I realized that the number 370 was simply a reflection of my calorie intake for the day, thus far. 

I love this idea. This app takes into account the fact that, ultimately, I just want to track a number. And that I would really rather glance at that number while doing other things on my phone than have to constantly open the app to get that information. 

Additionally, if that number is consistently in my view, I have a feeling I will be more likely to log any food that would change that number, and more importantly, be more conscious of what I am eating throughout the day. 

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Bad UX: What’s in a Name?

“The Weekender” by The MTA

Possibly one of the most annoying parts of living in NYC is having to rely on the MTA’s site for information regarding service changes. No joke y’all, I can feel my blood pressure rising every time I have to load this page.

However, by far the worst part about using this site, is accessing their “Planned Service Changes”. This information is essential for any New Yorker trying to get somewhere and, for most of us, likely the only reason for visiting this site, yet it is inexplicably difficult to both find and understand. 

Let’s begin with their homepage. There are so many things taking up real estate here that I would never use. And the one thing that’s not here? A list of current or planned changes to subway lines.

It’s not too big of a deal, however, since you can access the page through a link in the menu bar across the top of the page (fifth one from the left). 

Clicking on the link takes you to the main page for planned service changes. 

While there are several things that I would change about this page, the main gripe I have is with the sub-category “The Weekender”, nested under the category “Subways”.

First, the fact that there is only one sub-category kind of bothers me. Like with a bulleted list, if there is only one bullet, you don’t need the list. If there is only one sub-category here, why isn’t it just the main category? Does this take me somewhere different than if I were to click on the “Subways” link? If not, then we shouldn’t need a sub-category at all, only to rename the original “Subways” title. If it does, then why not list that under “Subways” as a second option of sub-category?

Additionally, is it the case that this “Weekender” only gives me service changes for the weekend? What if I want to find out scheduled changes happening on a Tuesday? Is that when I click on the “Subways” link? If so, why didn’t they call it something like “The Week Day-er”? (Yes, I know why they wouldn’t call it that but you get my point)

Once you click on the link, it takes you to “The Weekender” main page, pictured below. 

And here is a close-up of the page’s description of what “The Weekender” actually is.

If this is where planned service changes are happening, why does there need to be some distinction between “Planned Service Changes” on the previous page, and this page here? I also still don’t 100% know if this is only for changes on the weekend. There is actually no wording that explicitly says one way or the other that this is where all planned service changes happen, or just the ones one the weekend.

All in all, there is actually some decent functionality on this page (though it could use some serious polishing up). Plus the “Special Events & Getaways” also has a detailed list of all the scheduled happenings in NYC, which I could see being quite useful and I had no idea was there until looking around while researching this post. 

I just wish the people running the MTA were more concerned with accuracy than cleverness when it comes to naming their site’s most important features.

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Everything is designed. Few things are designed well.

Brian Reed (via inspirationmobile)

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Walkthrough: Carousel for iOS by Dropbox

First, let me start with a little background. I have a Dropbox Pro account which, when I initially signed up for it, only had 100 GBs (a number I came no where close to using to capacity). A year or two back, they actually upped this to a terabyte, again a number I’ll almost certainly never max out, but it’s nice to have.

A couple weeks ago, the Dropbox app on my iPhone started nudging me to download their new photo-specific app. Typically, I get pretty annoyed by an app I already have, trying to “sell” me something else, but I have a good amount of faith in Dropbox already established, so I decided to give it a shot. 

Right off the bat, I was not disappointed. Instead of making me either remember or go search for my Dropbox login info, the app creators understood that the only people using Carousel are likely going to be people who already have Dropbox apps on their phones, so it just pulled my login information from there and asked me to confirm. 

While I understand the necessity for password protection on services like this, constantly having to create and remember login info is one of the banes of my daily tech existence. Any common-sense steps toward helping circumvent this are always appreciated. 

Once I confirmed my account, I was taken on a painless three screen tour of what Carousel does and simultaneously received a “welcome” email alerting me that I was signed into the app.

Using the app is, for the most part, intuitive and straightforward. The layout of the photos in the main scroll menu is beautiful and definitely drew me into a walk down digital memory lane. The screen for showcasing a photo is clean and functions almost as expected though there was one snag I kept getting caught up on that I’ll discuss in a minute.

After giving me a couple minutes to look around, Carousel launched into a quick tour of its organizational, share, and scroll features. It also asked for permission to send me notifications for things like badges. I’m still not really sure why badges would be necessary in a photo storage app but I’ll keep the settings on at least until they become annoying.

When I exited the tutorial and returned to the main scroll menu, a “Learn More” bar was floating at the top of the screen. Clicking on it took me to a checklist of the main functions with which I should be acquainting myself and a picture of a happy cupcake. Unfortunately, I was unable to check off the remaining two functions which was slightly annoying. 

It is now about a week after my first tutorial and the “Send a photo” check box is still unchecked while the “Learn More” cupcake is still hovering at the top of my main screen. I really wish there were a way to get rid of this without having to actually use the sharing function.

However, the one main gripe I have about this otherwise intuitive app is what happens when I try to dismiss a photo that is being displayed in full screen mode. Typically, in apps for Twitter or Facebook, to dismiss a photo you swipe it up but here, when you swipe the photo up, the app selects the photo to be shared.

Eventually, I accidentally figured out that to dismiss a photo, you have to flick it down, not up.

However, my instinct from just plain muscle memory at this point, is still to flick up. So this means that literally every time I go to exit a photo I accidentally swipe in the wrong direction first. 

Not only that, but if you select a photo by swiping up and then correct yourself by unselecting that photo and swiping down to actually dismiss it, once you reach the main scroll menu, you are still in “select” mode for sharing which, at a glance, happens to look very similar to the regular mode. Hitting “Cancel” will exit you out of this.

While I appreciate how easy it is to share a photo, I personally don’t really share photos in this way. If I want other people to see an image I have taken, for the most part I will just post it onto one of my various social media accounts. This function, while potentially useful in some select situations, doesn’t seem important enough that it should be constantly tripping me up.

I think the whole situation could be circumvented, however, by simply allowing me to dismiss a photo by using the same motion I use in all my other apps. 

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Good UX: Because honestly, who has a printer?

As part of my course, I will be posting both good and bad design that I come across. My first post is about a feature on Amazon.com that made me smile.

This came about while I was trying to arrange the return of a book I’d ordered for class that was covered in some kind of waxy substance. I was required to print up a postage label but of course, while I technically do have a printer, the ink cartridges in it are in serious need of replacing, essentially making it a very large paper weight at the moment.

I was delighted to see that Amazon anticipates that many people these days, or at least the ones who use Amazon Prime, don’t have a home printer and responded to this need by building into their return process, an option to send the label to a friend for printing.

Here’s a close up:

When you click on the feature, a pop-up box appears that allows you to forward the information along, and send yourself a copy of the email as well.

Absolutely, little things like these are what make me smile. Can I save the PDF and send it to the person on my own? Of course. Do I really want to add another step to the process of sending back something that I would never have purchased in the first place had I known it would be covered in some mystery substance? Definitely not. 

Anticipating my needs as a consumer and providing an easy, common-sense option to handle them is something that I really appreciate in a website.

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Allow Me to Reintroduce Myself...

I’m an LSAT instructor who currently lives in the southeast corner of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I am just now beginning my journey into the world of UX design by enrolling in the full-time immersive UXDI program at General Assembly and this blog is where I intend to chronicle my educational experiences (sounds super exciting, right?).

Having worked as a tutor and teacher now for about six years, my daily job consists of analyzing how people interpret the complex information in front of them and coming up with simple, digestible ways to present that information to back to them.

I have to admit, I’m pretty excited to be able to finally be in school and only have to work on, well...school. For the duration of the program, I will be keeping my LSAT teaching and tutoring to a minimum and really hunkering down with classes instead. Woooooo!

So far, as part of my preparation for the course, I have complete the free CSS, HTML, Javascript primer offered by GA, called DASH which, if you are looking for an easy introductory tutorial into the basics of coding and web design, I highly recommend. I am also currently reading “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug and “The Practitioner’s Guide to User Experience Design” by Luke Miller.  

There is a good amount of pre-work that has been assigned prior to our class start on June 8th, so in order to keep track of it all, I have created a spreadsheet of deliverables (yay spreadsheets!) that I am slowly ticking off. Expect to find those items, and my own observations on the designs around me here over the next few months.

Ok, off to buy school supplies!