Have you ever tried to add a comment on a blog post and BAM, you're hit with a login wall? Just the other day I was reading an article on Medium, an online community blogging platform, and was prompted to login as soon as I clicked in the comment box. This barrier didn’t always exist. I remember a time where anyone could freely comment without the need for an account. However, bots, spammers, and trolls have taken advantage of this anonymity and as a result, account verification became a requirement in order to contribute. In some cases, comments sections have been completely removed.

I hadn’t commented on a Medium post in quite awhile, so as the registration form stared me in the face, several questions floated through my head. I thought to myself, do I even have an account? If I don't, is it worth creating one just to use this service? If I did have an account, what email address would I have used? Was it my personal email or my work email? What password did I use? I guess I'll just reset my password and see which email address it accepts... Continue reading "Social logins: are you trading privacy for convenience?"

We've all seen it. We've watched as user research participants struggle through what should be a simple task. We've witnessed them work across multiple off-the-shelf applications, each with their own idiosyncrasies and learning curves. The sum of these disjointed experiences are like driving over a paved, prairie road after the winter thaw: bumpy, unforgiving, and frustrating. But, each pothole is actually an incredible opportunity to address serious user experience challenges within organizations that purchase 3rd party software applications.

Companies will often work with multiple vendors to assist with various parts of their business. There are obvious cost savings rationale associated with purchasing an off-the-shelf product as opposed to developing software in-house. Some examples of this are: purchasing accounting software to track expense claims and purchasing issue-tracking software to organize the triage and resolution of calls to the call centre.

The unfortunate side effect of this is that their employees will now have to deal with several user interfaces throughout their day, each with varying level of usability, each possibly with a different login. This can lead to a very frustrating experience for users when you take into account each user’s unique needs and that each product is usually not designed with the other applications in mind. Over the years I’ve seen the full spectrum of experiences that accompany using 3rd party applications to assist with critical business processes. Some of these applications are just plain painful, some are a pleasure to work with, and some are merely ok—they get the job done with relatively few headaches and grey hairs. However, “3rd Party Software” doesn’t have to be a dirty phrase. With thoughtful attention to the user's experience across applications, we can design solutions to fill in those potholes, smoothing out the user's experience along the way.

Can’t we just all get along?

I recently listened to James Robertson give a talk at VanUE on Designing Behind the Firewall, where he showed many different applications of beautifully designed intranets for many enterprise clients. Continue reading "Filling in user experience potholes: connecting applications for a smoother experience"

One of the most difficult concepts to communicate effectively when designing for mobile is a touch-based interaction. Describing interactions with wireframe annotations (check out this blog from Wireframes magazine), and teaching gestures through reference guides (check out this great one from Luke Wroblewski) only go so far in communicating what that experience will actually be like. Many times those descriptions can result in some hand-waving and statements like "pretend the menu slides in from the left and you see this" during presentations. This is where an interactive prototype can really shine.

As part of the OpenRoad UX team, we were faced with a project where we knew that an interactive prototype would be convey the interaction design that we were proposing to a new client. As part of the team, I conducted a “state of the union” review of the current landscape of prototyping tools and was impressed at how far they have come. With support for rich user interactions, mobile gestures, and even responsive prototyping, there’s a tool out there that’ll meet your needs.

I evaluated quite a few tools but I narrowed down my list to these five options for review. Some of the tools that didn't make the list were in various stages of beta, or did the same thing that one of the featured tools already did very well. I felt these specific tools offered something unique to the market:

• Pop Prototyping by WOOMOO INC.
• Solidify by Zurb
• InVision by InVision App Inc.
• Proto.io by SNQ Digital
• Prototyper by Justinmind

Continue reading "State of the prototyping union: a review of the top five mobile prototyping tools"