#reading 9

[katewhitaker98]

[the-study-of-fun]

update on my ielts:

got 8.5 overall

have to take it again in February so hopefully i fix my writing in time lol

[carlymosshci]

Reading 9

1) The first reading was called “Think Outside the Box, but Don’t Forget the Box Exists” from UX Magazine. It discussed how consistencies between designs from different websites are important so that users intuitively know how to navigate a design, but if you are going to stray from the standard conventions, you need to be consistent within your own design. It gave examples of poor design on websites such as LaLicious, Amazon, and the MoMA and suggested how to fix those designs so that they are easier to interact with. The second reading was called “10 Most Common Misconceptions About User Experience Design” from Mashable and listed 10 things User Experience Design is NOT and why. It stated that   UX is NOT user interface design, a step in the process, about technology, just about usability, just about the user, expensive, easy, the role of one person or department, a single discipline, or a choice. The next reading was titled “Five Low-Hanging UX Tips” and listed five simple tips to improve website/application design: “when in doubt, make it faster,” “remove stuff,” “do the thinking for me,” “delight customers,” and “first impressions matter.” The final reading was called “Closeness of Actions and Objects in GUI Design” from the Nielsen Norman Group and stressed the importance of placing objects and actions close together in a GUI in order to make operations more straightforward. 

2) Something I would like to discuss in class comes from the first reading where they talk about the thirteen different font treatments that show up in the product description of each of Amazon’s products. The article states, “Thirteen styles are too many for users to memorize and decipher to quickly learn a system and reuse it properly. Further, the current micro system lacks visual organization, making it difficult for users to quickly scan the page.” I think it is ironic that Amazon, “the largest online retailer in the world,” has such poor design on its website. When I think about it, I often find it very difficult to find certain features on the website and each page is often very cluttered with too many products for me to possibly focus on. How could a company that is so successful make so many mistakes in its design? This also links to the example of poor design with button placement in iTunes that is mentioned in the last reading from Nielsen Norman Group. I guess it is important to acknowledge that even hugely successful companies can make poor design choices. 

3) Another thing I found interesting is the tip listed in the third reading, “when in doubt, make it faster.” The article cited that “For Google, an increase in page load time from 0.4 second to 0.9 seconds decreased traffic and ad revenues by 20%.” That’s crazy! I think we take speed for granted a lot these days, but it is obviously very important to people. I know that I have abandoned a page if it was taking too long to load. I wonder if our patience for load time will just get worse over time. I bet the load times of an average page now will seem archaic in just a few years, similarly to how I remember waiting for dial-up in the 90’s.