User Experience Monitor

The Value of A Space of Your Own for Design

For many years I've struggled with the pros and cons of group work vs individual work in the area of software app and Web design.  Sometimes it's great to have a team, and a creative team at that, to work out specific problems.  Other times, well, I just need to be on my own thinking quietly about the problem (and so does my Art Director, and so does my developer).

So, I relished this article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine:  The Rise of the New Groupthink, and the research behind individual vs group creativity. And guess what the long and the short of it is? Individualism wins out when it comes to innovation. And introverts rule.

And the UI Innovation Award Goes To... "Zen Mode"

Most web and mobile users look for zip and jazz and wow factors in their interfaces.  I am in love with simple interfaces.

Therefore, I applaud the Nieman Journalism Lab for their "View in Zen Mode" button.  What could be simpler?  You're reading along in an article, and you want to focus on it.  You push the "Zen Mode" button and whoosh! all the distractions of left columns and right columns and headers and footers fall away and magically, you're just - reading the article.  Sweet.

Try it out on this terrific article by Ken Doctor: "The newsonomics of the long goodbye: Kodak's, Sears', and the newspapers'" and see what you think. (Hint: The "Zen Mode" button is on the right).

The article in regular mode (a few distractions, like most Web articles)

 

The article in "Zen Mode" - mmm, lots of white space. Doesn't look exciting in this little screen capture but when you're reading it, it feels very, well, Zen. I feel calmer already.

 

 

What the Search Engine Wars Teach Us About Web Design

Recently, Google and Bing have been feeding off each other's design work. Well, let's say Google has been feeding off of Bing. The New York Times, among other publications, have been in turn feeding off the "Search Engine Wars."

Case in point: Google "lifted" the idea for the left-navigation of results from Microsoft's Bing a few months ago. My question is: is this so bad? I think this kind of derivative one-upmanship is at the core of the growth of the Web - everybody uses everybody else as a stepping stone to get where they want to go.

In the case of the Internet, that kind of strategy advances the collective user experience of the Web, provided the features and design used represent a good user experience. 

 

via www.nytimes.com

 

What's in a Look? Google's Recent Changes Make Waves

Anyone using Google consistently in the last few months realized at some point, things had changed when they introduced the new "Bing-like" look and feel - the left-hand column of options. Google added tiny little icons and categories for a search term, to presumably help the user navigate the vast array of choices s/he faces when doing a text search.  

The questions I have are: 1) Is this an improvement? (does it actually help you as user of Google search find what you're looking for, and 2) Will it impact how users become used to seeing search options presented in the future, within a site?  The Web world seems to move in synch with Google, and it would be hard to imagine this doesn't have an impact (even though Microsoft's Bing did it first).

A recent article on PC World points out that there isn't anything terribly earth-shaking about the recent change to Google's home page: they simply cribbed off the idea of the photographic background from Bing.  But the outcries are numerous:

Google's New Look: Why is Everybody So Upset?