“Please press the cancel button and turn the adapter’s radio on”
An impressively awful dialog design from Dell. Bad on so many levels.
Author Archives: Harry Brignull
Charlie Brooker: “I love complex gadgets. What I can’t stand are idiots who don’t know which buttons to press”
There was a very funny tongue-in-cheek article on technorage by Charlie Brooker in Monday’s Guardian (21/01/08). Here’s an excerpt: Recently, I was on a plane, sitting beside an 80-year-old woman who couldn’t comprehend how the in-flight entertainment system worked. It … Continue reading
“Reply to all” on SMS would be good for everyone
Some passing thoughts: Wouldn’t it be so useful if you could have group SMS conversations via a “reply to all” feature, just like you can with email? Imagine how much more profit the mobile operators could be making. What a … Continue reading
This is a great deal* (*actually it isn’t)
Some stunningly awful usage of the evil asterisk by three.co.uk for their X-series package (The UK mobile operator) – Actually, if you dig into the Ts & Cs, the limit is 1GB a month. This is a big difference from … Continue reading
Buzzword: great user experience
Launched in early 2007, Buzzword is a web-based wordprocessor made using Adobe Flex / Flash. In terms of user experience, it craps all over Google Docs and the competition. I’m amazed I’ve only just heard about it. Try Buzzword now.
Wary of giving your password to yet another site? – OAuth to the rescue
Woah there! You’ve found yourself on an old article. Take note of the date before reading. I’ve just been doing a spot of reading about oAuth and thought I’d do a quick post on it. This was a hot topic … Continue reading
If you haven’t already seen the Adobe Thermo demo…
This demo video came out in December, but if you haven’t already seen it, you can watch this edited down version (without the warm-up chatter). Online Videos by Veoh.com Thermo is basically a tool for interaction designers (rather than developers), … Continue reading
The ‘Boxing Glove’ Wireframing Technique
I’ve been delivering a lot of User-Centred Design training lately at Flow, and I’ve noticed that when most people do paper UI sketching, they can’t help going “hi-fi”, and making very precise wireframes. It’s just too easy to get sucked … Continue reading
OLPCs: if you were leader of a 3rd world country, would you buy them?
Imagine you are the benevolent leader of a small fictional country somewhere in the third world. Your resources are limited. While your country isn’t as poor as some other third world countries, many of your citizens can’t read or write, … Continue reading
Three User Experience Guidelines for Ajax Sliders
Ajax Sliders are becoming an ‘in’ tool for filtering search results. They are also quite easy to do wrong if you’re not paying attention to the user experience. Before you read on, check out Properazzi and try out the price … Continue reading