Usability

The City of Vancouver finally launched their redesigned website. I say finally as it was at about a two year long project and it was something that was long overdue.

Full disclosure: Analytic Design Group did the in-depth usability and accessibility assessment on both the mockups for the redesign as well as a prototype.

This is a picture of the fire escape route from a hotel where I recently stayed.  I am sure this image is perfectly clear to the architect or engineers that worked on this building.  Unfortunately, the designers of the information failed to understand their audience and, more importantly, the context in which the information will be consumed

One of the primary draws to mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets is the ability to download and install apps on the device. The paradigm of an application storefront began in early versions of Apple’s iOS, and has since been adopted by all smart device operating systems. Now what interests me the most about these storefronts is how people use them.

I was in my dentist’s office recently and saw paper signs plastered everywhere in the waiting area - Come follow us on Twitter!

Now, I like my dentist as much as the next person, and I’ve been going there for over 15 years, but the first question that I asked myself was Why on earth would I do that?

It seems like there is a constant debate amongst smartphone users. You've got the touchscreen enthusiasts who pride themselves on the sleek, minimalist design of a touch-only device. Then you've got the two-thumb texting machines that will not touch a phone that doesn't have a physical keyboard.

Many video games allow you to configure your buttons the way you want. For example, if you don't like that you have to press X in order to jump, you can assign the O button to be your jump button instead by going to a button configuration menu. Unfortunately, not all games do button config menus the way you'd expect them to.

Happy World Backup Day. This auspicious day was created by a few of the gang over at Reddit to remind us to take better care with our precious information and data. I wish they would have reminded me sooner.

Crafting and reviewing at the overall design strategy of a product is one of those upfront actions that helps to get all involved parties to agree on a consistent look, feel and design philosophy for that product's interface. Identifying the various business goals, user requirements and technological constraints helps the team set reasonable success milestones.

Last week a friend of mine (smart, successful entrepreneur) was telling me about a copier he’d leased for his office of 20 people. Their old copier was no longer up to the task and they had decided to lease a new machine from a big copy machine company. They have the need for both oversized printing and colour scanning so the machine is they need pretty complex.

Actually I've never been to a Mayo Clinic and to be honest I hope I never need to visit one. I am, however, a frequent visitor to the Mayo Clinic website. Over the last two years I've had the chance to work on design projects for a number of health-related websites and I often turn to the Mayo Clinic website for inspiration.