RUXY

Week 12 Frank and Oak is woke www.frankandoak.com has my favorite type of graphic design: photography-forward with a clever use of type and grids. They have such beautiful stylized photography and a cohesive style. They have clothes to buy and also these subscription boxes. I haven't seen many companies try to pull of both of these models. The UX feels so intuitive that I am able to focus on the imagery and quality of the product, with an invisible minimal touch of design. So nice. Arngren oh my! I couldn't wait to dive deeper into this site: www.arngren.net I mean, it is like an art piece. Look at the color and different products. It makes me think of my artist friend's work Case Simmons below: Let me play with Arngren and give it a chance. Omg, I clicked the airplane link and I went even deeper:  Looks like I want to buy a tank, here's the page:  I tried to buy this tank and went here: Okay, I give up,...

Week 11 Persol is cool I was pretty hard on Walmart in my last post for their minimal, design—that is because minimal isn't what they are about, Walmart is selling everything and I couldn't tell that. On the other hand, Persol should and does have a minimal experience that feels right. They have a small assortment of quality eyeglasses and this works for them. I can focus on the product and not be distracted by the overly designed elements like Zara does. Ahh, I just want to look at the details of my future pair of glasses. So refreshing. Ray-Ban is bland It is frustrating when websites have a popup right when you visit the site. It makes me not even want to enter. Not sure why Ray-Ban does this, it feels like they put a wall up that I need to jump over.  There is an exclusives section that seduced me into viewing but I quickly just wasn't sure what I was looking at. Certain companies are starting to ride on their laurels that the customer...

Week 10 Amazon is Gold Of course Amazon has great UX. The only test that needs to be done to see this is how many customers they serve every day. When I wrote the title to this blog post I didn't realize that Amazon actually has a category called Gold Box Deals, serendipitous. They are everything to everyone and sell physical content as well as non-tangible item such as tv shows and audio books. They are even starting to sell houses! I can think of a product, search Amazon, and have it being shipped within less than one minute. That is a great user experience! Walmart is old You are instantly hit with a bland and uninformative homepage when visiting www.walmart.com . For such a monetary powerhouse (they claim to be the largest retailer in the world), it is amazing how unsophisticated their UX and web design is. Take for instance their "Trending near Santa Maria" section. I don't live in Santa Maria and the recommended items are a speaker...

Week 9 Asos is Awesome Asos is a photography-forward design. Very visual and minimal use of type. The categories are laid out clearly and they have so many ways to navigate to the same product, rather through searching by clothing type or activity type. It seems very functional and user friendly. Zara is Na-wesom I know it is their aesthetic that they are trying to achieve, an "I'm not trying" look. Very maximal and I think they want the viewer to feel like it was a natural experimental design that they are trying to achieve. However, the legibility, readability, and functionality is suffering—and making it painful for the customer. Here are some of the visually overloaded landing pages. I tried to take snap shots of the animation, but that may be in the code. A lot of these pages have other graphics moving around that the screen capture wasn't able to see. 

Week 8 : Apple gets an A+ Apple is always ahead of the curve for UX design. Last year they unveiled a side scrolling page for their iPad pro page. Now, the iPhone 11 Pro page is out of control: simple and engaging. They always explain very technical concepts clearly and beautifully.  Google Store gets a G Okay, so Google has only been building hardware for a few years and has had an online store even less. So this is being over critical, but I do find it tough to navigate and find certain products at store.google.com .  Yet, here are some snapshots to explain. I think they assume too much that I am familiar with their products and categories. I have no clue what they new products without names even do. But, they look cool!

Week 7: GOOD UX: Strava is a great community based running app that a friend referred me to. It is meant for running and exercising, but works much like Instagram and Facebook. You runs and accomplishments can be public and your friends can give you kudos. These really act as encouragements to want to show-off, which is great to reinforce good health habits. BAD UX: Blackboard I'm sorry, but it was the app that I was just struggling with. Here are my pain points with Blackboard: The course information, assignment information, and assignment submission are all in different locations For the most part, assignments in the Discussion board are only named 4.1, etc. with no description. I can't count the number of times that I've gone into submit an assignment, but it is unclear, therefore I need to navigate back out, hunt down the Week 4 page, and then go back into submit. This causes confusion and wastes a lot of time. Especially when commenting, it is really tou...

Week 6: GOOD UX: Instagram Instagram seemingly recreated Facebook, stripped out all of the content, and distilled the experience down to what people truly want and have time for, pictures alone. This model is still relevant and is the app that I can always look at for just a few minutes. Always updating, always changing, never boring. BAD UX: Buzzfeed I really have trouble with overly busy app screens. There is too much hierarchy among the headlines, subheads, and body copy. I feel like it visually resembles a classified ad, but is even harder to soak in the info.

Week 5: GOOD UX: 23 and Me This is a great app for retrieving information, researching your results, and constantly being updated. It is all real information about your body and health history all pulled from a blood sample. They app plays like a video game with information about what food to avoid, if you're prone to cancer, and even tracking down relatives that you didn't know about. The app is constantly adding new information as well, so you can learn more and more about yourself and family lineage. BAD UX: Linkedin I only say this because I think the mobile app version isn't intuitive when it comes to job searching. Nearly every time I go on the app to look for jobs, I can't easily find my saved jobs or applied for jobs. Also I feel like if I save a job posting on my phone, it isn't necessarily on the website version.