Notes

Notes on UX Design

278 notes

Sep 2026

This UI is trying to be too clever. Feels awkward to use.

Thread · 2 posts

Grok @bot is an interesting product. There's a couple different concepts there that I think are pretty useful.

Agents—Consumers don't really know what agents are. I think this is the best attempt at introducing it to them. The cute little characters kind of personify the agents and each character has different talents.

Computers—The more powerful thing here is that each agent has it's own computer. Connecting these to agents is really smart and makes agents able to accomplish a on weak machines.

This feels directionally right, but I still think this might be too advanced for consumers.

Aug 2026

Super interesting approach here. Seems great for flat areas. I'm unsure how well this would work on a mountain road though.

Keiryosha | まちの計量舎@machi_measure

最近たまに見かける「インセプション風の曲面マップ」、ナビアプリに実装されたら手前と遠くが同時に見渡せて意外と便利そう。

orbify.eu

Aerial map view that curves upward like Inception, showing a stadium and streets bending into the distance

Polish can be a distraction.

Historically, I'd only wireframe when I felt like the concept needed more feedback than the details.

The same is true with prototypes today.

Emil Kowalski@emilkowalski

While I really like prototypes, because you can convey ideas easier by interacting with the real thing, it’s also important to know when not to do them.

Prototypes have this flaw that because everything is already built, and it looks so real, people might assume that all the decisions have already been made.

That’s because the building step was the most expensive before AI, but it’s not anymore.

So sometimes, it’s better to ask the why first. Why are we making this in the first place?

Allow yourself to be slow, write a doc with your reasoning, and only after you are aligned, start prototyping.

It all comes down to judgement and taste at the end of the day, whether it’s an animation or an important product decision.

You need to develop great taste, it’s more important than ever.

Aug 2022

May 2020

Apr 2020

Applications that prevent users from passwords from having sequential characters are silly. Discourages uses from using long pass phrases.

Mar 2020

Feb 2020

Neomorphism is visually interesting, but seems to have the same flaws of flat design without any of the benefits.

Low contrast in most of the designs are certainly a discovery/
accessibility problem. At the same time it would be time-intensive to build complex elements.

Meng To@MengTo

I know some hate it, but here are my observations on Neomorphism.

- Diagonal light & shadows
- Gradients (optional)
- No textures
- Buttons look more tactile
- Can adapt to dark mode

If you don’t exaggerate, implementation is adding 2 shadows and 2 inner shadows (optional).

Figma file of a neomorphic music player app with four soft-shadowed phone screens for Music, Playlist, Lyrics and Browse

Dec 2019

Facebook's notification system is such a disaster. Are the notification settings even wired to the application?

Nov 2019

Sep 2019

Jul 2019

My Atlanta design peeps: A few of my co-workers are putting together an enterprise design meetup. See you there?
meetup.com

Jun 2019

I don't understand why some websites limit passwords to 20 characters?

May 2019

@ow To be fair Twitter's current UI regularly receives updates. As a product, Facebook hasn't noticeably changed in years. The only thing that has changed is the addition of new notifications, which have made the product unbearable.

Interesting thoughts on @facebook's supposed new UI.

Brian Lovin@brian_lovin

Seems like people interpreted my last tweet about this as being negative or inferring that I thought the update is bad. What I really meant though, was that I literally have questions about this. Here are my questions so far:

Facebook's 2019 redesign with a left nav, Stories row, a lake-jumping photo post and a Contacts list

Mar 2019

Feb 2019

Jan 2019

@lyft for the last couple of rides tipping has either been broken or slow on my Pixel 3. After the ride ends I just get a blank screen. Please fix so I can tip these awesome drivers.

Oct 2018

Sep 2018

I do like most of Chrome's new UI. Although, I'm not a fan of this trend towards super-rounded form fields.

Aug 2018

Design friends—does anyone have example of bulk editing a multi-select field?

Think the most common scenario would be managing tags in a list.

Jul 2018

@FlyFrontier trying to check-in. When prompted for more information, the continue button doesn't appear to work. Tried in Mac Chrome, Safari and Android Chrome.

Jun 2018

You know what? Other than the comment expand/collapse interaction, I'm a fan of the new @reddit UI.

I don't understand why so many financial tools fail to show cost basis vs market value charts. It seems like that would be a top interest.

May 2018

Gmail's new smart compose feature is fascinating. I'm curious about the interaction design. As is there's only one suggestion that can appear. Maybe it's that good? blog.google

Apr 2018

The best thing about the new Gmail UI is how little functionality has changed. New icons and states. Some different looking buttons. Overall it feels like a big visual improvement without removing what makes it great.

Interesting. Chrome now shows definitions inline with it's typeahead field.

Thread · 2 posts

Intercom moved their secondary navigation from the top to the side in their redesign. This could allow for more horizontal space—especially when no filters are applied.

Mar 2018

Feb 2018

Initial impression of Vero—it looks like a lot of applications on dribbble with no context to how thing work.

This is an interesting new idea @Twitter is testing. Aggregating tweets about a single link.

Jan 2018

It drives me nuts when @SlackHQ tells me I I have an unread message, and that message is in view.

One one hand I like the live widgets. It's cool that I can use it on the landing page. On the other hand it wasn't entirely obvious. noticeable.io

How does a critical alert system like the one in Hawaii take 40 minutes to communicate a false alarm? I understand that mistakes happen. There is some pretty terribly designed software. That is unacceptable. newyorker.com

@RossFloate It does sound friendlier. Elsewhere, I've heard people say priming users. I think they are all similar.

So much of UI design is setting and meeting the expectations of users.

Dec 2017

The more I think about it, the more I dislike using Toggles/Switches in interfaces. I know it's a standard iOS element, but for other than the most basic enable/disable items checkboxes are more clear.

Oct 2017

Mapping a reply to R isn't a great shortcut @office365. Every time I want to refresh the browser tab (CMD+R), I end up opening a reply.

Trying to think of an application that uses a masonry grid, but doesn't include photos—thoughts?

Every time I see a ridiculous password requirement, I wonder if it's just going to be saved in plain text.

Sep 2017

I hate when websites use cursors inappropriately and use too many different cursors on a page. This site does both. colorz.fr

The video of the interface in the Model 3 is terrifying. You have to use the screen to turn on windshield wipers? jalopnik.com

Aug 2017

Wow, Salesforce doesn't mess around with their flash notifications.

@Twitter, Is it just me or does the cursor not change to pointer when hovering a button or link anymore?

This is such a fantastic question about improving rule builders that require nested rules. buff.ly

Jul 2017

Interesting idea—Allow Users to Purchase Temporarily 'Out of Stock' Products by Increasing the Delivery Time baymard.com

If you're going to have the inane password requirements, it makes more sense to email login links to users. github.com

I've probably referenced this article a dozen times. It's a fantastic example of advanced filtering. buff.ly

Jun 2017

@NokiaHealth Please bring back the average trend lines that were in the Withings android application! That was one of my favorite features.

May 2017

I'm certain there is a correlation between product/engineering debt and the amount of settings in an application.

I love spending 20 minutes yelling numbers at an automated phone only to have it tell me the system is down and I have to send them mail.

Forbes has to be the world's worst online publication. In addition to ads rendering the site unusable, they now have autoplay videos...

Apr 2017

What are some sites or products with multi-level navigation that you don't hate?

Today in mundane-but-interesting—Why Japan's Rail Workers Can't Stop Pointing at Things buff.ly

Feb 2017

If google is going to use panels to display search results, they need a different UI for the search bar. buff.ly

For a website largely used by designers, the UX of Typekit is horrendous. I want to use the back button to navigate to the previous page.

In case you were looking for some light product reading—why I refuse to use the term "Dashboard. "solomon.io

@smileysteve It's because they suck. My serious answer is that they add clutter and take away from the "chat" experience.

Jan 2017

This is generally why we advise against in-app NPS surveys. Just email them to customers.

SnapChat's Story UI is intentionally (supposedly) difficult to use. I wonder if Instagram's stories causes them to rethink that decision?

Dec 2016

Nov 2016

The get a quote section on Insurance by Jack is a great implementation of conversational UI. Perfect with the Brand. withjack.co.uk

Oct 2016

The autoplay video with sound on @CNN's website is atrocious. Facebook has shown autoplay can be done, but respect the user/visitor.

Sep 2016

I don't know if Amazon is split testing, but Helvetica Neue Light is not a good choice. Terribly difficult to read.

This talk with Aarron Walter was great—around 48m, he starts drawing the parallels between prototyping and animation buff.ly

Aug 2016

Is there really no select all option in the @Dropbox web application? That seems like a serious oversight.

I don't like that I have to tap the Twitter notifications icon twice to mark them as read on Android.

Jul 2016

If any of you have built CSV import or column mapping tools, contribute to DN's knowledge. buff.ly

It drives me crazy that in markdown a single asterisk creates italics, while in @SlackHQ it becomes bold.

Getting back to the homepage is 6x more difficult when placed in the center as opposed to the top left corner. nngroup.com

Who ever decided that a CNN Live stream should autoplay halfway through an article—it's a terrible idea. Way to distract your readers.

Jun 2016

People are experts at understanding their problems, not necessarily in designing the solutions.

@SamuelHulick If you haven't seen the Anchor.fm onboarding process, you should give it a look. Probably one of the best I've seen.

May 2016

Dashboards are a symptom of poor design, not a solution to it.

Apr 2016

The most difficult part about product design is creating a consistent experience.

I have no idea what the buttons in iTunes are supposed to do.

Mar 2016

The mobile version of Wikipedia is so much easier to read—even on desktop.

Signing documents in Acrobat is such a pain in the ass. I'm about to Photoshop my signature into this thing.

Feb 2016

If you're looking for some mobile onboarding inspiration. This gallery of onboarding videos is a nice reference buff.ly

I admit since the Product Hunt redesign, I just don't find myself on the site anymore. It's much more difficult to scan horizontally.

Jan 2016

“ Using real examples from the start of the design process is important as it forces you to design for reality.” gosquared.com

The fixed header and footer on hbr.org are brutal. There's barely enough room to see the article.

Snapchat definately follows the usibility as an anti-pattern argument—Usability as the enemy buff.ly

I'm all for mailto links, but they shouldn't be used in buttons. They should only be used with linked text email addresses

Dec 2015

Nov 2015

Designers and product people—how would you feel about changing your site to use social logins?

Love the subtle animation when you like a tweet. Hint: Like this to see it.

Anybody out there have experience preventing duplicate accounts from being created, when implementing social login?

Oct 2015

It's interesting to watch users use your product after a major design release.

It's interesting that emojicons are the answer to the difficulty of communicating emotions in text interfaces.

Sep 2015

Aug 2015

What web application has the best onboarding process. Suggestions?

Jul 2015

I'm pretty sure Yahoo is just making up design patterns for logins. Pretty sure I have 4 or 5 separate accounts now.

Tumblr's UI is just a bit too clever. I have several Tumblr blogs, and still get lost whenever I'm at the dashboard.

Jun 2015

As a user, it's maddening. Chances are I won't remember what I used when I'm trying to access my account next week.

My Morning:
-This is going to be a usability disaster
-Hey, this might work
-This is going to be a usability disaster
-Hey, this might work

May 2015

I'm kind of sick of the whole UX vs UI thing now. A good product is a good product. buff.ly

The Manchester City website has an accessibility page, which lets users change background colors, font sizes. buff.ly

"Like a well-built home, great software focuses on giving its users hundreds of small, satisfying interactions." buff.ly

Apr 2015

I'm frustrated with these tabs that contain a bunch of forms. Markup is getting sloppy.

I have no idea what all these buttons do in my Comcast account page. Also, every click brings up a loading wheel...

Don't ask for a username when you want the user's email.

Mar 2015

Whoa, that's pretty cool. If you login to your @DollarShaveClub account after clicking on an email. You only have to enter your password.

Feb 2015

Thank you for downloading our app, we now have your address book and will start sending you spammy push notifications.

Jan 2015

Can't select fonts from @typekit's dropdown, so I'm going to use Google to find the font I want instead.

Whoops, that's a serious design mistake—Ford recalls SUVs because drivers are accidentally turning them off buff.ly

Dec 2014

Nov 2014

Oct 2014

Also, not giving Taco Bell permissions for contacts, calendar, location, phone, photos, Wi-Fi connection info, device ID or call info.

So I spent this weekend working on an unofficial redesign of The Pandora One desktop player. What do you think?
dribbble.com

Deceptive design as a business model—Congratulations! We successfully did not give you any discount! buff.ly

Interface design has three facets: Visual, UX and Conversion. Too much of one, and you neglect the others. It's a careful balancing act.

Apple isn't interested in building a touchscreen laptop, nor should they be. It's a terrible idea. Remember Con10uum? vimeo.com

Sep 2014

What does login look like without the password?—Urgent security warning that may affect all internet users Sehttp:/ buff.ly

Aug 2014

Interesting, coke freestyle interface changes and back / forward arrows illuminate on the bottom when the handicapped button is pressed.

Jul 2014

Adobe CC has such a horrific user experience click a button that should work in-app, sends me to a webpage.

Jun 2014

Hey @Quora, I've already logged in via email. I don't want to connect my Facebook account.

May 2014

Never seen this pattern before. Share or take a survey to continue reading.

Apr 2014

The three types of interface design: Visual, Experience and Conversion. Now I need a venn diagram.

Building ugly software is no sin, but building unusable software is.

Design fails when simple things need labels or instructions.

Mar 2014

Facebook's new News Feed was too good. It got canned in favor of ad impressions—Facebook's Predicament dcurt.is

Interesting thought, but I don't think this is true in most cases—Notifications are a UX Anti-Pattern buff.ly

Good UX, Wells Fargo ATMs wish you a happy birthday when using them within a week of your birthday.

Little things in the UI make the biggest differences in UX—A Look at The Magnifying-Glass Icon in Search Design nngroup.com

Feb 2014

Good design - a parking deck that shows how many spaces are left on each floor.

Very cool to see the discussion my post about UX and social media buttons has caused over the last week. x.com

Jan 2014

Initial reactions to Facebook's new product Paper—Solid interaction design, looks like a FB only Flipboard, interesting for about two days.

While we're talking about news publications, I'm fascinated by the fact that readwrite.com doesn't have a nav, just a topics page.

Dec 2013

Not sure I want to support users on touch-screen laptops. I don't want to support devices with poor ergonomic design. #aeasf

Mobile-first design is taking a small screen and making it better, as opposed to taking a big screen and making it worse. -@lukew #aeasf

The guy that increases conversions 34 percent gets a dish at the cafeteria named after him. - @lukew #aeasf

Keep the keyboard use to a minimum on mobile. #AEASF

Sneak peak at a chat app I've been working on. Think I need to revisit some of the features. Already too complicated.

Nov 2013

Sep 2013

Kentico CMS goes down as one of the worst pieces of software I've ever used. No regard for the user. Simple tasks are extremely laborious.

I see this hipster x marks all over websites, and always think clicking them will close something.

I've been seeing the image zoom on hover effect a lot lately. Generally, I'm hesitant about new UI ideas—this time may be different.

LinkedIn's endorsement feature is a borderline dark pattern UI. I shouldn't be receiving endorsements for press releases.

The primary function of the carousel in a user interface is to convince clients they don't need a "media center" or a "gallery" page.

Aug 2013

The Office Outlook web app is spectacularly bad—so much that it exceeds the desktop application. Quite the feat.

The more exploratory the visual experience, the worse the UX tends to be. Not bad, just something to keep in mind.

Jul 2013

The enterprise software conundrum is a likely culprit. End users aren't usually the buyers.

Omnigraffle rule of thumb - Sites with great IA are easy to lay out, sites with proor IA will make you want to throw things.

Jun 2013

Interesting button styles. Especially the green section (click the order truck). But some of them feel over-the-top. tympanus.net

May 2013

Apr 2013

Oct 2011

Video: How will we use screens to interact with our environment in the future? A few interesting ideas... tumblr.com

Aug 2011

Jun 2011

Nov 2010

An Idea for Navigation Companies - I have an idea for the GPS companies of the world, companies like Google,... tumblr.com