Design Critiques

Instagram is a photo sharing app, which utilizes several of Don Norman’s principles for good design, which make it a user-friendly social media mobile app. (You can also make 15 second videos with Instagram but this blog will focus on the photo sharing aspects.) There are a number of constraints that make Instagram easy for […]

Feedly is an RSS aggregator available for Android, iOS, and through web browsers. I use Feedly primarily through Firefox, mostly because I find the mobile app too annoying to use. Upon opening the Feedly Android app, the first visible screen is the most recent story in the user’s first category. (At least I think it’s

Yesterday, I wanted to get a cup of tea before I went to work because I have been feeling a little under the weather. I knew there was an Argo Tea on University Place, close to my workplace, so I Googled “Argo Tea” and found myself on their website. And that was about all that

The GNOME 3 desktop environment is one of many GUIs supported by Ubuntu OS. Upon starting GNOME 3 (which is to say turning on the computer or starting Ubuntu,) the user is faced with an environment that should not be too unfamiliar to any computer user (above.) The interface is minimalist, and the only visible

The newest version (9.0.2) of the iOS Snapchat application is an example of bad design. And for those who have never used Snapchat before the newest update, it is an example of horrendous design. Trying to navigate this version of Snapchat proves a perfect demonstration of the Norman idea that understandability rather than simplicity is

I have often marveled at the bad design of Pratt’s “Academic Tools,” and now, thanks to Donald Norman and The Design of Everyday Things, I have some vocabulary to explain why the design is so bad. Academic Tools is a section of Pratt Institute’s website that allows students to do the following tasks: accept or

The Uber iOS application (in its most recent version, 2.58) is an application my mom can use. As a car service request, it saves the user the time and energy of calling and waiting for a regular cab (which, from experience, sometimes does not even show up) and does not require the user to have

As a working student with a reasonable amount of loans on my back, I recently realized that I was in dire need of a way to track my spending. Like most people, I have multiple bank accounts and credit cards that I use to make my various payments and receive my deposits, not to mention

Searching for a case of bad design as defined by Don Norman in his book The Design of Everyday Things proved to be far more difficult than finding a case of good design. This is likely due to Norman’s observation that users tend to falsely blame themselves rather than the design when something can’t be

I believe that the user interface for Gmail is an example of good design. Using concepts discussed in Don Norman’s book, The Design of Everyday Things, and images of my own Gmail account, I will prove my statement. The first screen that you see offers many clues as to the proper operation of your account.