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.”
Measure is a pre-installed utility on the iPhone that enables users to quickly gauge the size of real-world objects, measure a person’s height, and automatically detect the dimensions of rectangles. This article critiques the Measure app through the lens of Don Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things, analyzing its interface against key usability principles. First […]
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Splitwise is an expense-sharing application designed to help groups track and settle shared costs efficiently. While it serves various collaborative scenarios, it is a mobile-only application. This article critiques its interface through the lens of Don Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things. 1. Color-coded Balances Splitwise provides a great example of bridging the Gulf of
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Prime Video is a membership-based subscription streaming service by Amazon that offers movies, TV shows and live TV. Access requires an Amazon Prime membership and add-on subscription are available as well on Prime Video, which allow users to stream across devices and outline downloads. X-Ray Prime Video has a unique feature of “X-Ray”, which is
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Spotify’s iOS app enables users to discover, organize, and listen to music and podcasts through personalized playlists and libraries. The app emphasizes ongoing discovery through recommendations based on listening behavior, while supporting common tasks such as searching, saving, downloading, and sharing audio. Login Page When initially opening the app, Spotify prompts users to create an
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Adobe Lightroom is a computer program geared toward photographers that allows users to organize, touch up, and edit large amounts of photos. Importantly, edits are non-destructive – meaning that edits are saved as instructions rather than modifying the original image. Importing Photos To import images, Lightroom opens up your computer’s local file management system, easily
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The “Magnifier” is an accessibility utility by Apple that uses the device cameras to assist visually-impaired people with their immediate surroundings. The primary feature of the app is “magnify” – which seeks to assist users read small text. It has many other features too – including scene descriptions, and furniture/door detection. As this is a
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Assistive Technology: Home Blood Pressure Monitors Nowadays, HBPM(house blood pressure monitor) has become a common part of everyday households, especially those with older adults or people managing hypertension. By enabling blood pressure measurement outside clinical settings, this kind of AT(assistive technology) devices support routine health monitoring and allow users to manage their well-being more independently
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Introduction Subway Time is a mobile app that uses data from the MTA to predict the arrival times for subways in NYC. It has over 14,000 reviews on the App Store, making it one of the most popular transit apps used in the city. The app is designed for simplicity so that users can focus
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Envision Glasses are AI-powered smart glasses designed for individuals who are blind or have low vision. With an integrated camera and built-in speakers, they articulate everyday visual information into speech by “speaking out” the visual world to wearers. The lightweight wearable offers an array of features designed for accessibility including real-time text and object recognition,
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Otter.ai As Assistive Technology Otter.ai is an AI-powered live transcription and note-taking tool developed in 2016 and is now widely available on as a desktop app, iOS app, Android app, and a Chrome extension. It offers a robust free option with all of the base features, and affordable paid subscriptions as well to access more
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