Introduction I got my first pair of Apple AirPods about a week ago and while exploring its features, I was surprised to learn that they can also function as hearing aids for people with hearing disabilities, something that was also discussed on the first day of our digital accessibility class. This discovery was particularly intriguing
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Design Critique: Too Good To Go (iOS App) By Annie Huang / February 9, 2026 / Design Critique Too Good To Go is a mobile app designed to reduce food waste by connecting users with surplus food from local vendors at discounted prices, and has become a widely adopted platform for everyday sustainable consumption. This
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OpenTable is a dining reservation app that allows users to explore local restaurants and make reservations with ease and better communication. It provides both diners and restaurants with an open communication platform that replaces the traditional, messy reservation process with a streamlined, informative network. Signing-in: Onboarding The sign-in pages (figure 1-3) utilized the classic phone
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Pikmin Bloom is a free augmented reality (AR) mobile app developed by Niantic and Nintendo. By implementing gamification strategies, it encourages players to walk more, explore their surroundings, and foster healthy habits. Although Pikmin Bloom demonstrates the power of gamification, it still suffers from several usability friction points that disrupt the Seven Stages of Action.
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Preply is a language-learning platform that connects students with live tutors. This critique covers the typical student experience on iOS platforms, including onboarding, tutor discovery, booking, and language practice features.
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The Ray-Ban Meta AI Glasses enable users to send messages, make calls, take pictures and videos, listen to music, and use voice commands to ask Meta AI questions and receive answers in real time (Meta, 2026). Although the glasses are marketed as a lifestyle device, they also function as assistive technology for people with visual
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IKOU is a portable chair designed for infants and toddlers who need postural support. Created by parent Yuri Matsumoto with IDEO Tokyo, it was designed to allow families to bring postural support with them outside the home. In Japan, government-subsidized supportive chairs work well at home but are too bulky and heavy to transport easily.
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Introduction Pokémon Shuffle is a mobile puzzle game where players line up Pokémon icons to battle opponents and progress through levels. It blends casual match-three gameplay with RPG elements like team optimization and collecting Pokémon. The game succeeds in keeping players engaged, but its registration, onboarding, and interface design also reveal notable usability challenges. Registration
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Introduction CapCut for Mac is a desktop video editor that aims to make video editing fast and approachable while offering a broad set of features. The experience is sleek and simple, but some design choices create friction around onboarding, visibility, sharing and error recovery especially for new users. Getting Started: Registration & Onboarding Right away,
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Hume AI is a text-to-speech (TTS) product whose primary selling point is its advanced emotional intelligence (EI). Emotion is, after all, the most powerful tool of voice—amplifying meaning, tone, and impact in text. Since achieving natural-sounding TTS has become largely a solved problem, the differences between products in basic voice quality are shrinking (or just
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