Design Critiques

FastLane is the online system used by the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the management of research proposals and awards. This critique focuses on the system functions related to proposal creation. The proposal template provided by FastLane is comprised of a list of forms, which are edited by selecting the ‘Go’ button to the left […]

  Samadhi Arts is an arts non-profit, founded in February 2015. The founders are two friends, so my understanding of Samadhi (its curatorial vision and personal narrative) has been shaped through many conversations since the company’s founding. My interest in critiquing the design of their Events and Gallery pages has to do with their website

The Epson LabelWorks label printer is a device for typing and printing label stickers like the kind you’d stick on file cabinets or mail boxes in apartment buildings. The device’s design fails mainly in that it presents a system image that is both difficult to understand and far more complicated than the average user likely

The doorbot is a both a physical device and an accompanying software application for mobile devices. In this post, I’m focusing on the physical device component as an example of good design. We bought the doorbot for our building when our buzzer system broke. The physical device mounts to the front of the building next to the

Sky Guide, a star and constellation guide for iPhone is a brilliantly simple and intuitive app that adds a fun new dimension to stargazing for all ages. Sky Guide’s conceptual model perfectly aligns with the mental model of stargazing. Although Sky Guide provides no instructions when opened for the first time, users can instantly infer

The Chronicle of Higher Education is the leading news source for all things academia related in the United States and around the world. As a subscription incentive, The Chronicle boasts that print subscribers also receive free access to the Chronicle’s digital edition via their iPad app. As a print subscriber to The Chronicle and an

iAnnotate PDF is an app for taking notes on PDFs. It allows for easy connection to Google Drive and Dropbox and has a myriad of options for adding annotations. Though I use it frequently for taking notes on articles, and it is wonderful to be able to search across all of my notes in a

Two Dots is a game that involves connecting two or more adjacent dots in order to earn points. But without even getting into the actual playing of Two Dots (which I do a lot of on the subway), the navigation interface presents several features that qualify as good design. As soon as you open the

On occasion I find myself having a difficult time completing an assignment or project; constantly distracted by the other open programs on my desktop. I frequently turn to the browser application Write Space when I do, mainly because its design offers a simple, distraction free environment. Donald Norman would say that simplicity does not equal

I decided to write about the WordPress.com content management system (CMS) used for creating blogs and websites. I have used this management system for both school and work and at times have found it to be very frustrating. This content management system has poor usability qualities. As I reflect on my experience, I have found