A gallery of iPhone app designs
ux
Design for Sensors, not Screens
The Forest for the Trees
Every UX professional feels the pain that has driven me down my winding career path, but the next steps aren’t obvious and there is not a clear path to follow. I’m trying to document the opportunities that I see, in the hope that others will drive forward, taking risks in order to have a larger impact.
Admittedly, I miss the days where I spent 10 hours in Photoshop or wrangling code. When I’m finalizing budgets, dealing with internal politics, reviewing contracts or defending a product roadmap, I seriously think about returning to those roles. Those challenges are much more familiar. The role far more comfortable. The results of my effort easier to see.
But my influence would be dissipated. My view of the world narrowed. My ability to deliver a great experience reduced, hampered by the decisions of others.
I would not make the impact that I want.
A Place at the Table for UX
Every so often I’m asked about my career path: “why the switch from coding and design to workflows and wireframes?”, “what prompted the jump from User Experience to Product Management?” or “why the move to the business-side of the house?”
It took me a long time to realize that my reason is simpler than my lengthy replies, outlining a cycle where I gained more control over the experience with each move, only to find that I didn’t have the final say. There was always someone else who would make the call, or could change something that I felt was in the best interest of the user.
Now, my answer boils down to this: I want the best possible experience for our users, and the only way to do that is to be the person who makes the final decision.
Many companies say user experience is critical, but until there are more of us in true, company-wide leadership roles, UX will not have its proper place at the table.
The (Updated) UX Career Path
This entry supersedes my earlier post laying out my take on the career possibilities for UX professionals. With this, I aim to shed light on the differences between the options, the responsibilities of the positions and the steps needed to transition from one role to the next.
This post remained a draft for far too long, held there by my hope that I would find time to fill in all of the job responsibilities specific to the PM and UX roles. I lay out four major levels: the Individual Contributor, the Manager, the Senior Manager and the Executive, which I acknowldege is far from exhaustive. There are steps between and within these levels, which aren’t included and there are branches into independent contractor roles as well as design and engineering paths that go unrepresented. Instead of waiting for everything to come together, I’m publishing this as a starting point for us to discuss the possibilities and realities of the industry.
I would love your feedback and look forward to a wide-ranging discussion.
The State of Multi-Column Twitter Clients
I’ve used a Multi-column app for Twitter for a few years now, as it is e one way for me to compartmentalize and prioritize the people and topics that I’m interested in. Of late, I vacillate between Tweetbot and the new, Twitter-owned Tweetdeck, both of which are solid, while having a couple of flaws that keep me from adopting either 100%.
This is a bit frustrating, but also provides an opportunity to break down what does and doesn’t work for me in each app, with the goal of outlining the changes that would result in a “perfect” app for my needs.
I’m not going to enumerate over all of the feature of each as their respective Web sites can sell the products. Instead, I’ll highlight some of the features and gaps that impact how I use the apps. For reference, I use both on two different screens: a 13″ MacBook Air and a 27″ iMac. I’ll leave a review of the mobile apps for another day.
Columns & the Timeline
Tweetbot’s column layout is clunky – if I add another column, I have to minimize and maximize the app in order for it to appear. I’ve found reordering of columns to be more intuitive with Twetdeck. Plus, in Tweetbot, the main Timeline column cannot be moved – I prefer to have the first column display a subset of the overall list of people that I follow. Tweetdeck provides this flexibility.
Tweetbot’s display of attached media, such as photos and videos is cleaner, showing the thumbnail to the right of the text. But, this is also the place where it shows my avatar when I tweet, so I don’t see the thumbnail. While this isn’t a huge deal, I post quite a few images via Flickr and Pinterest, so I like to see the thumbnail to confirm everything is working as expected.
Syncing
Tweetbot’s integration of history syncing is a killer feature for me, as I access Twitter on four different devices. Tweetdeck lacks any form of cross-device history sync such as Tweet Marker
Muting & Filtering
Tweetbot’s Hashtag mute functionality is excellent and convenient to use. All it requires is that I right-click on a hashtag, select Mute and choose a duration. Tweetdeck’s filtering capability is strong, but it is buried, so it isn’t convenient to use when I want to mute a specific hashtag.
Post-Filtered Columns
I miss the column functionality of the old Tweetdeck, which didn’t rely on Twitter lists, but instead allowed you to create a column that is post-filtered. The problem with using Twitter Lists, is that they don’t include @replies between two users that I follow. So, if @patramsey replies to @atxryan, that tweet doesn’t appear in a List, even though they are both in it. The conversation will appear in my main timeline. Neither app provides the functionality, but I still see it as a gap.