Design Critiques

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.”

Design Critique: MailChimp (Web Platform)

Description Mailchimp is a platform that helps manage, create, distribute, and track analytics from newsletters. Newsletters are a commonly used marketing tool commonly used by organizations to promote products, circulate ideas or stay connected with an audience. Due to inconsistencies in the rendering of HTML and CSS code on different devices, platforms and operating systems

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Home screen ATK

Delicious Navigation

America’s Test Kitchen (ATK) has long separated itself from its Food Network siblings by its serious approach to cooking and a rich, subscription website. The experience is close to seamless as users are able to access and watch familiar television episodes and the tone of voice mirrors the on-air relationship that the ATK conveys. While

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Relax or Stress?

Airbnb.com, booking.com, homeaway.com, and many other vacation rental websites have expanded the universe of what is available to travellers and what travellers expect on vacation. User experience and how users interact with a booking website and the vacation experience means that homeowners wanting to earn passive income need to be aware of who their users

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Design Critique: Kindle Notebook Interface (PC app)

This critique evaluates the interface of Notebook function on Kindle PC app. The Notebook stores the following type of notes: bookmarked page, user’s written notes, colored highlights, starred highlights, and popular highlights from other users. Users can select from a drop-down menu to review their preferred type of notes. In addition, users can star or

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Design Critique: The FOIA Electronic Reading Room of the CIA [website] (Or: Better Design as a Key Issue in Public Access to Government Information)

  The Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) FOIA Electronic Reading Room (www.cia.gov/library/readingroom) is a section of the CIA’s overall website dedicated to providing public access to CIA documents that have been released under Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and/or other information release mechanisms. This section of their website hosts a number of digital/scanned agency records and

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