Busy month for me! So much so, I almost didn't get this out in the two month period. Aside from much work (and travel for work) I spoke at the UXPA group here in Kansas City, another group in Indianapolis, and at UXlink. My next currently-scheduled speaking engagement is not till November, in Suzhou, China but if you want me to come talk to your company or event, tell me about it.
I also wrote my regular column on (mostly) mobile UX for uxMatters, this time on airplane mode. It's great that we're getting people to think of the offline state, but horrible they think only of online and offline as two states. Read on for the rest of my rant, and specific tactics and tips.
Remember the monthly call? Yeah, still no one seems to care, or have the time. But if you want, I am still open to the regular Skype session with one or several of you all. Got a question, confused by something I wrote? Just tell me and propose a time.
This time around, I actually posted things here as I read them, sometimes with comments. I may do that going forward, so feel free to come back and check it out for the next newsletter.
Americans abandoning wired home Internet, study shows We hear all the time that wireline phones are all but a thing of the past, and traditional TV is so fading that it will next be called legacy TV. But the latest trend is to not even have wireline internet at home, at all. I don't mean that everyone's on WiFi, but instead that no wire comes into your home at all; people are relying on mobile data services alone. I've said for years that the normal computer is no longer a PC, and this is increasingly true. Time to start building for mobile first, and maybe only.
In Mexico, No One's Catching Android for Mobile Ad Impressions Even if you know that globally 85% of people carry Android, or that in the US iOS is flat so Android is growing well past it (about 55% to 45%) how many things still launch on iOS first, or only? And the excuse is that iOS is more worth it. Someone is always trotting out some stat about iOS having more clicks, more responses, more revenue spent, etc. But two problems: One, fanboys. This is all cherrypicked data, and more than once it's what we call a "lie." I mean, they misread the data and misreported, in favor of iOS. Two: The rest of the world is not the US, and there are very few iPhones in much of the world. If that skewed data is true everywhere, it's by user not device, so high end Android picks up the slack. Well, check out this report on mobile ad behavior in Mexico. Android wins, by a landslide. The lesson in Mexico is: advertise on Android. I should also say I am not an Android fan, I am a truth fan and the truth today is Android dominates, in every region, in every sector. When that changes, so will I.
Google is becoming a design leader by simply saying what they mean. The latest under their Usability section is some very readable and clear Accessibility Principles. Worth a read.
5 Essential UX Rules for Dialog Design Dialogs are a way of life. They are over used and most of all misused. This is a great summary of design principles, but also do understand the three types of modality. Hint: never call them "modals" as that's just one type.
Why we won’t hire you as a UX designer I agree with most of these, and any UX designer should. And many of us think this not because our clients confuse UI with UX, but because we work with vendors and other teams that don't get it. So we end up trying to work around terrible designs, sometimes for years. There's a limit to how much we can be nice and amenable and educate everyone in this world.
The Veil of Ignorance Beautifully written treatise on how we cannot use our own opinion, experience or gut-check-empathy to design for accessibility. "Imagine the frustration of people who use things designed by people who don't take their basic needs into consideration. I think it is dehumanizing."
This is What the History of Camera Sales Looks Like with Smartphones Included Remember this critical part: this is only smartphones. Almost all the rest of the 4 billion phones also have cameras. Stop thinking that only smartphones matter. Mobile phones in general are the most amazing scale of any technology in history.
Is the Avoidance of 3-D Bar Graphs a Knee-Jerk Reaction? Interesting on its own, but also: research trumps common practice and gut instinct. Knowing science, math and language, and having good analytical skills is important as well; being able to read research properly helps.
“Should Designers Code?” fetishizes tech over other crucial design skills The title says it all really. For some reason we no longer want anyone to know anything, just to go to trade school and get to work. See the previous bullet; we need to be educated deeply, and even if we think code is important, that means we need computer science, not coding.
http://blog.invisionapp.com/mobile-ux-user-expectations/Mobile UX and User Expectations Meh. I mean, I like the concept of thinking of how people work, and there are some good bits I guess but it's way, way too anecdotally based and uses the current view of the world; just from the first few grafs, many teen texters loved Blackberries and "flip phone" is a form factor, not a useful way to say "featurephone." But whatevs.
You want futurism, me to predict what's next? How about no one typing? In, Is China Ready to Ditch Typing? Motherboard reminds us how annoying it is to type in Chinese, and reveals the (supposed) tremendous quality of a voice to text engine Baidu has. Now, talking to your phone all the time has issues, but even a 20% increase in a market like China would change everything. What would you design interfaces for if it wasn't even typing anymore, but talking?
Hey, mobile designers! You ever slightly worry that they are all killing us? Well the cancer thing has been mythology forever, but this study makes it even more clear there's no risk at all A 29-Year Study Has Found No Link Between Brain Cancer and Cellphones.
This says all there is to say about why I design the way I do. No pixel perfect anything. Rules, and fluid design for everything.
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