What makes some designs good and others bad? Why do some designs work while others don’t? Posts in this category offer thoughtful design critiques of modern digital interfaces, with commentary inspired by Don Norman’s “The Design of Everyday Things.”
Zocdoc offers an online platform for patients to search and schedule appointments for medical or dental care. Although users can access the service through both a mobile app and a desktop website, this critique focuses on evaluating the Zocdoc app on an iphone, through the lens of concepts and principles introduced in Don Norman’s The […]
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Reminders app helps people remember things they can easily forget, such as grocery lists. It gives users interface with daily checklist without making any additional effort. Throughout this blog, I will review the Reminders app in correlation with Don Morman’s ‘Characteristics of good design’, mentioned in his book “The Design of Everyday Things.”
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AllTrails is a fitness and travel app for outdoor activities like hiking, biking and climbing. It provides users with trail guides to find their most suitable trails, navigate along the way and keep tracking their routes. This critique will focus on one of its key functions, trail navigation.
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The Kayak Android mobile app provides an easy way to find flights, hotel stays, and rental car services. Kayak excels at creating a clear conceptual model of how to set up and run a search, but not of the entire scope of the app’s features. A streamlined interface may also be a trade-off for invitations to human error. It is interesting to note that Kayak was one of the earliest exemplars of creating more usable graphical interfaces for travel booking, but now may be extending its feature list too far.
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Libby is a reading app from Overdrive through which public library patrons can access digital content. Users sign into Libby using their library card, and are connected with the eBooks and audiobooks that their public library offers.
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Dot Watch is a sleek, minimal wrist watch with a moving braille pin display for users who are blind or visually impaired. The watch can not only communicate time and date – it can also translate text messages, notifications, the names of incoming callers, and other text from an iOS or Android device.
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Introduction: While waiting for your train to arrive in Japan, you may notice bird chirping across the station. This birdsong is meant to be an audio guide to point the visually impaired towards the ticket gates and exits. Depending on the direction of the escalators, a different type of birdsong is being played – one
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Envision Glasses is an AI-powered smart glasses aid for people with visual impairments to read text, identify people, describe the scene, and navigate. Based on the enterprise edition of Google Glass, Envision Glasses is able to articulate everyday visual information into speech and speak that out to the users.
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Syrinx is the next generation of electrolarynx (EL) devices. It’s currently under development, and is a hands-free EL device that allows people who have lost their voice to regain their voice. It also utilizes machine learning to allow for improved communication in intonation based languages, as well as helping to preserve a person’s unique voice.
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Hungry Cat Nonogram is a simple mobile game application focused on nonograms – puzzles where players use number hints and logic to correctly fill grid squares with colors to create pictures. Players can use coins gained from successfully completing puzzles to customize a cat companion that accompanies them to each puzzle.
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