OK, I said it, I fucking hate Pinterest.
I know it’s all the rage and it’s growing like a weed, but what is the point? How many photos of adorable babies in adorable outfits, women contorting themselves into artistic yoga poses, Pottery Barn living rooms, inspirational quotes crafted in gorgeous typography, and food porn do we really need, after all? Apparently, a lot.
Face it, if you’re designing for the web, you’re designing for mobile. It may not be your niche, but everyday more and more people are using their mobile browsers to consume online content. Google recently predicted that this year one billion people will use a mobile device as their primary access to the Internet.
More than ever designers need to consider the conditions under which their audience will be interacting with their designs, and the only way to do that is to understand your end users and their browsing habits.
A new iOS application called Clear has been making the rounds in the online tech and design circles. Tech pundits are loving the simplicity, user interface, and gesture based interaction model. I’ve received messages from friends and colleagues asking if I’ve seen the “clever UX” of the to-do application. Well, I have seen it; I downloaded it the day it was launched, and spent some time using it. I determined within about 15 minutes that, while the user interface is certainly clever, the application falls short in the usefulness department.
With the ever-increasing number of devices (big & small) capable of browsing the web, adapting a user’s experience to best suit the type of device they’re using is a natural progression in user interface design. Unfortunately, some designers are applying the responsive design approach to content.
As acclaimed information designer Edward Tufte once pointed out, software designers and drug pushers are the only two practitioners that refer to their customers as “users”.
Why not pick the name of a persona & plug that name into the designer’s title?
While I’m certainly grateful for the recognition and appreciation of the importance of the UX design field over recent years, I’m not thrilled with the semantics of the title. Words matter, and we can do better.
Although this post won’t make a shred of difference in what the UX community is called, I’d like to make a few suggestions:
Seeing as I’ve transitioned into a position that focuses exclusively on mobile user experience and interface design, I thought it was only appropriate to tackle a more mobile-friendly (i.e. adaptive, fluid, responsive, progressive enhancement, etc.) redesign for my own site. I thought I’d share a bit on the process and nuts & bolts behind the transition.