As home has transformed into a workplace for millions of people, applying UX thinking can help keep it a healthy place to live and work. Lockdown life can be tiresome, especially as we continue to crave access to the physical world and a return to our families and social groups. The digital devices we use […]
Author: The UX Engineer
Five ways the corona lockdown impacts UX
User norms are always evolving, but the corona lockdown has put change into overdrive — as UX designers we need to account for this in our design thinking. Self-isolation, social distancing, face masks, rigorous hand washing rituals and communicating with friends and family exclusively via video conference are just some of the ways societal norms […]
What can we do to humanise our “user experiences”?
How one book gave me better perspective on human experience design. Having just finished reading “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” by Shoshana Zuboff, I feel like my eyes have been opened that little wider and the tech world won’t quite look the same again. The text is a tour de force thought provoking analysis of […]
3 Recent dark pattern implementations you have probably missed
In the wrong hands UX can be a dark art. I’ve rounded up three recent experiences that have got under my skin. Everyday we unwittingly encounter dozens of systems designed to sub-consciously nudge us into taking actions we wouldn’t naturally do, but are mainly there to benefit the system masters – these are anti-patterns or […]
Silicon Valley ‘Tethics’ in the real world
Sundar Pichai’s op-ed in the FT is a call for big tech to be more ethical and I genuinely do agree with the sentiment, for Google it’s a brilliant PR move, a pre-emptive strike. It’s akin to walking into a crowded room – farting, and then saying ‘can someone smell something?’ As a society we […]
There’s a problem with the latest emoji additions, and it’s only going to get worse 😥
With over 3,178 emojis and 168 new ones just added in the latest release, of the ubiquitous Unicode pictogram collection – there is a major problem looming, categorisation. Ever tried finding an emoji these days, it’s like finding a needle in a haystack. Especially if you’re trying to find that elusive emoji you’re pretty certain […]
Product owners – not sure how to get that insight? Well, there’s a web-app for that.
“How do we get the insights we need?” heard that question asked of yourself or in your own head? The Research Picker tool was designed to help you answer these questions. As a business or product owner, you want to build the best product experience for your users. You know you need to run user […]
How can you teach your three year old to program?
Education technology has made it easier to engage kids and introduce them to complex ideas. If I were to bet on the one essential skill that our children will need in the future, to give them an advantage across many facets of life – it’d be have to be a solid understanding of programming. There […]
Are you inadvertently creating unethical products?
As UXers, we’re here to champion the user in our projects, but do we really champion the user’s needs? Within our product teams we strive to create great user experiences, typically we test out new concepts with our users, observe their behaviour, consolidate the data and use the insights to push the needle ever further […]
Experience Design Masterclass: Disneyland vs Legoland
Last year we visited two theme parks with the kids, Disneyland Paris and Legoland Windsor. Cue a blog post on dissecting the theme park experiences, how the detail really matters and some of the great service design elements that have been deployed to maximise fun and reduce tedium. Before we go further in my opinion […]