When you have to taste it

I have been wondering about this issue since I started using Skype many years ago: during video calls on a laptop or desktop computer, you can either look at the camera, i.e. directly at your vis-à-vis, or you can look at the image of that person, but not at both…

It is time to admit it! — Voice stop announcements are finally introduced in the buses of Helsinki, according to Helsinki Region Transport (HSL). Hurrah! — was my first reaction. However, as I went on reading this news, my feeling of joy has quickly evaporated, and I just want to bang my head against the desk. Don’t…

What is the right moment to ask your users for a favour? — A long time ago I formulated a somewhat naïve postulate for myself: “If designers, manufacturers (and lawmakers) would be obliged to test their creations in real life, we would be living in a perfect world.” Okay, I am not writing here about any mission-critical tasks or really bad design examples…

The terms “customer experience” and “user experience” are often used interchangeably. Indeed, it is often difficult to distinguish one from another, especially when we are talking about electronic services represented by apps. Here is my short observation about how a minor modification in the human-machine interaction made the user experience…

A lift with an external control panel I remember reading about such lifts, but this was my first personal experience: in an office building I encountered a lift that can only be operated with the control panel located on the floors. …

Controls of different nature should be positioned with care. — Long ago I was wondering why two menu elements — “duplicate” and “delete”, both are starting with “d” but having dramatically different effects — were placed next to each other in Google Slides context menu https://useinability.wordpress.com/2012/10/25/google-got-it-wrong/ Great that Google has since separated them in that menu so that they cannot…

Recently, I listed a few issues with Helsinki region public buses that undermine passenger experience, mainly related to the stop information inside of the bus and on the bus stops. However, I forgot another, very important one. When you are at a bus stop, you have to raise your hand…

A good story about sex bias in global design Invisible Women - 99% Invisible Snow plowing patterns seem an unlikely subject of a gender study conducted in a small town in Sweden. After all, the…99percentinvisible.org