UXploration!

Good evening, friends and fellow design fiends! This week, we'll be UXploring a common household item all of us have experience with: the remote control. Which of my clickers has a user-based design that reigns supreme? The Good: Roku In full disclosure, this is not the Roku remote that came with my device. It was purchased after I lost the first Roku remote, which was even more user-friendly. However, Roku does elegant simplicity very  well, and this replacement remote is no exception. The buttons have multiple functions, depending on the app one is using within Roku, but because there are so few buttons to begin with, this is not a source of excessive frustration. This remote is not perfect: do I really need one-click access to six apps? No. In fact, I only hold subscriptions to two of the featured apps. However, if I did need them, I would still find the remote easy to use, as each button is clearly labeled. Did I need a wrist strap for my remote? No, but it served as a great to...

Hey, dudes and dolls! We're back with new web design to critique, so take five and cool down while this hipster takes you on a trip to check out whose web designer had the chops for the job, and whose designer really laid down some clams. The Bad (As I'm sure you all remember, in jazz, "bad" means "good"!) This week, our prime example is the official website of saxophone luminary John Coltrane . Fact: Saxophones are the sexiest instruments. I won't go into this with a lot of detail today, but: I'm not a huge fan of websites that have a "landing page" like this. You know, where you first arrive at a display page and then have to click to truly "enter" a site. In this case, however, I can easily overlook it. The "landing" part is below the website's header. Even with the strong hierarchy the album name provides, the header is easy to spot. Coltrane's signature is also an icon that links back to Home. The navigation...

Hey again, everyone! Welcome to our fifth installment of UXploration! This week, I'm tackling something I love to talk about and design: packaging. Branding is such a fun topic to dig into, and I cannot wait I have a chance to delve entirely into that, but in the meantime, I'm going to just be talking about the user experiences involved in two collections I purchased that came in gift boxes. (Disclosure: I'm including links in case you want to see the items, but I do not have an affiliate link, so I make no money from this. Enjoy!) The Good: Frozen II Elsa Collection Set, by Colourpop My (Snow) Queen, everyone Show Yourself! While this blog is not the place for me to wax poetic about how much I love the Snow Queen and Elsa as characters and how much I adore makeup as a form of self-expression, I will say that this collection could have come in a recyclable brown paper bag, and I still would have shelled out the money for it. With that out of the way, this box adds incredib...

  Introduction Hey everyone! Welcome back to UXploration! This week, we're going to touch on websites that are exceptionally relevant to me: Designer's websites. As a designer, especially if you design web-based elements, your website is your portfolio. It shows potential clients what you are capable of and where your strengths lie! It can also, unfortunately, reveal your weaknesses. The Good Frank Chimero is an independent designer and author who has worked at multiple major organizations, including Nike, Microsoft, and Etsy. Chimero's website is simple and incredibly easy to navigate. The user is immediately presented with a choice between viewing Chimero's design work or information about his books. Upon selecting "My design studio", the user is immediately redirected to the page below : His studio's site is equally simple and easy to navigate. Samples of his work are shown in a straightforward grid, while the header at the top invites the user to clic...