10 Most Common Misconceptions About User Experience Design

Example 1 – Capitalize first letter of first word only

Your information

First name:

Last name:

Email address:

Work phone:

Cell phone:

I like this approach the best because it’s more conversational. Almost as if you are reading a book.

Example 2 – Capitalize first letter of all words

Your Information

First Name:

Last Name:

Email Address:

Work Phone:

Cell Phone:

I like this approach less because the capitalization on every first letter interferes which readability. Each word is given the same weight.

Example 3 – Capitalize all letters

YOUR INFORMATION

FIRST NAME:

LAST NAME:

EMAIL ADDRESS:

WORK PHONE:

CELL PHONE:

I really don’t like all-caps. The readability is terrible. There is no flow. Every letter has the same weight.
The capitalization style also poses problems for action hyperlinks.

Example 1: Add new category

Example 2: Add New Category

Example 3: ADD NEW CATEGORY

There are rules around this from a print aspect (The Chicago Manual of Style), but they don’t take interaction into consideration. Is there a good guide out there? Currently it seems to be all over the board.

Making something fun is a huge challenge which is why I admire the video game industry. I think the web community would do well to utilize more ‘gaming’ elements in their designs.

The iPhone is not easy to use: A new direction in user experience design

http://chancebliss.com/rube/index.html

Case in point. This morning I went to Facebook and started posting comments on photos of a friend’s nice baby. I wrote something like “Are you sure you want to do this baby thing? Maybe adoption is the answer”. Not very nice, but she would expect that from me. After laughing to myself,  I started surfing around and noticed a few strangers amongst by friends. Then came the “You stupid idiot! You are logged into your wife’s account.” I should have noticed the tiny 110× 200px image of myself sandwiched between the left navigation and “what on your mind?” box or by my name in 8pt font in the upper right hand corner. Thanks a lot Facebook.

I get why Facebook did this. They want individuals to easily see and interact with their other. However, by removing individual from the center, the user is without an anchor, lost in a crowd of friends.

Dear Mr. Bliss,

In June 2008, Continental announced plans for extensive commercial cooperation with United Airlines and Star Alliance, linking our networks and services worldwide to deliver new benefits to our customers…blah blah blah

OnePass Members:

• Will continue to earn OnePass miles on Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines for all qualifying flights through Oct. 24, 2009.
• May book and ticket reward travel using OnePass miles for travel on Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines through Oct. 24, 2009.
• Must complete all reward travel on or before Oct. 24, 2010.
• Will continue to receive Elite upgrade privileges on Northwest through Oct. 24, 2009, or the date of the Delta SkyMiles and Northwest WorldPerks loyalty program integration, whichever comes earlier.

OK. Now what? How am I actually benefiting from this? There seems to be a lot of date restrictions and of mentions of “rewards” and “privileges”. Can I click on something? Can I do anything with this email? Oh! I know. I can delete it.

A better email from Continental would have been:

Hey Chance,

We noticed that you have not arrived on-time for your pass 3 flights with Continental. Sorry about that and the sits next to the smelly toliets. As I token of our appreciation for choosing Continental, we automatically added 10,000 miles to your OnePass membership.

Book a flight with your OnePass miles now!

Happy flying,

Continental

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