flâneur

How to fix a bad user interface

scotthurff.com · 4,774 words · saved by 1 readers

Hey! This is an excerpt from my book Designing Products People Love, which was published by O'Reilly in January 2016. Learn more about the book and the 20+ product designers from Facebook, Twitter, Slack, etc. who were interviewed about how they work. Have you ever experienced a user interface that feels lifeless? Have you created a UI that just seems to be missing...something? If that's the case, you've probably experienced a case of Awkward UI. Awkward UI is a missing loading indicator. It's forgetting to tell your customer where something went wrong. Bonus points for doing so with a scary error message. It's a graph that looks weird with only a few data points. It's a linear snap into place when introducing a new piece of data. Still not clear about what Awkward UI is? Here's a simple real world example: I use Apple TV. A lot. (In fact, I have the latest episode of Star Wars: Rebels playing in the background as I write this). Whenever I pull up my Purchased movies, I see this screen

Hey! This is an excerpt from my book Designing Products People Love , which was published by O'Reilly in January 2016. Learn more about the book and the 20+ product designers from Facebook, Twitter, Slack, etc. who were interviewed about how they work. Have you ever experienced a user interface that feels lifeless? Have you created a UI that just seems to be missing... something ? If that's the case, you've probably experienced a case of Awkward UI. Awkward UI is a missing loading indicator. It's forgetting to tell your customer where something went wrong. Bonus points for doing so with a scar

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