There’s a study that shows that people report that wine tastes better out of fancy crystal wine glass. Poor winemakers toil away in the mud, consulting the phases of the moon, to bottle a more excellent vintage than the last. Who knew all they need do is order up a box of Riedel stems.
I’m in the fortunate position of interviewing developers for the Identity team at Mozilla. I’m not sure how common it is for a designer to interview a developer, but that’s how we do. I queried Twitter “Designers: When interviewing a developer for your team, what are your best questions for finding out if you’ll work...
In an exasperated voice “Why is it so hard to get designers in open source.” I hear this all the time. Well firstly, it depends on what sorts of skills you’re talking about. Just like in code, there are small tactical problems that are good first bugs. Even the simplest issue requires a knowledge of...
I’ve been thinking about log-in a lot lately. Yesterday it occurred to me to see what sites across the web were doing about it. Do they require log-in? Sure, almost all of these have user accounts, but can you use the core functionality of the site without one? The results were overwhelming, 87 of the...
As part of my work on the Identity project at Mozilla, I’ve been taking a look into how the average person thinks about single sign-on. It’s a complex system, so not surprisingly, it’s most often misunderstood at a fundamental level. I ran an unmoderated user test with usertesting.com with five users. Their task was...
13 Signs Your UX Needs an Exorcism View more presentations from Crystal Beasley. Making simple, elegant solutions is HARD and often invisible. These are some of the most common things I hear when heading for a bad UX decision. And before any veteran designers go ripping me a new one, these are rules of thumb...
Simple (a.k.a. Bank Simple) is doing a hell of a job with their password strength indicator. Here’s a sneak peak into their interface. Thanks to Ryan Snyder for getting me a super early invite.
Yes, this is a post about Mozilla, but you can generalize to any open-source software project. At every conference I hear the same refrain, “Why is design so hard in open source?” It’s so hard because *drumroll please* it’s not made a priority. None of the top decision-makers are designers. Period. The End. You...
I visited Ziba on a sunny, crisp fall day. (Yes, we do have them at least once a decade here in Portland.) One of their talented creative directors, Kai Halsinger, was generous enough to show me around the studio and talk about what makes it all work. Specifically on my mind was how their physical...
You know Kenneth. From 30 Rock. The one who’s well-meaning, goofy, clumsy, sweet and… charming? Or something not quite like that. His earnestness makes you want it all to work out for him, but you know it won’t. My Android tablet, the Samsung Galaxy Tab, is Kenneth. Its helpfulness is enraging. There’s a bright little...
There aren’t many things more viscerally experienced than a protest. It’s got all the right components: big crowds, a common purpose you’re passionate about, defiance of authority and the accompanying tinge of danger. For me, that danger was foremost in my mind. A funny but serious post went up on the weekly rag, The Portland...
I was intrigued to use Ethnio to grab live recruits in real time. Usertesting.com has been proved itself to be a fast, cheap way to get videos of people using your site. Put them together? Magic! Like a well-executed magic trick, this combo requires finesse to make it appear effortless. My goal was to grab...
Designing for COPPA
Apr 1, 2013
UX of a Wine Glass
Feb 4, 2013
People DO Care About Little “p” Privacy
Dec 18, 2012
How to Interview a Developer
Nov 26, 2012
Code Talks and Designers Don’t Speak the Language
Oct 10, 2012
9 of 10 Sites Agree Requiring Log-in is Whack
Feb 14, 2012
How People *Think* Facebook Connect Log‑in and Log‑out Work
Feb 7, 2012
13 Signs Your Site Needs a UX Exorcism
Jan 20, 2012