Spotted this sign recently and it reminded me of an upcoming RPR…
“Typos Kill Customer Confidence”
Thought you guys would get a kick out of it.
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Category Archives: UX/UI Design
Hoping a cheaper unsubsidized price will bring sales, BlackBerry to sell Passport for $599
12/16/2014 UPDATE
When you’re right, you’re right. FOX has declared this one of the biggest flops of the year.
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My first thought when I saw the picture was “God, that is ugly.”
Add in the fact that it’s square design will make it hard to stuff in your jeans pocket.
From a usability perspective it would seem that having the keyboard scrunched down at the bottom would make it very hard to use since your hands are way down below the center of gravity. I’d constantly be afraid of it flipping out of my hands and landing on all that glass.
Besides, do we really think many people are going to choose this instead of the i6 over a measly $50?
If you want to buy a square-screened smartphone for less that most competing flagship handsets, you’re in luck: The BlackBerry Passport is expected to start at $599 off-contract when it launches this week. That’s less expensive than the new Apple iPhone 6 base model which starts at $650 at full-price and rises by $100 for a larger display or more storage.
The move is meant to spark interest in the new [company]BlackBerry[/company]. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal on Monday, BlackBerry CEO John Chen said “I figure that to try to get the market interested, we’re going to start a little lower than that.”
Chen is spot-on in his assessment as there has been practically no interest in the company’s handsets of late. BlackBerry has watched its once dominant market share evaporate into vapor as phones running [company]Apple[/company] iOS, [company]Google[/company] Android and [company]Microsoft[/company] Windows Phone have taken over. BlackBerry…
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Google’s Chromebook strategy moves forward with support for Android apps
The only thing I can recall about Chrome Books is that scathing commercial starring the guys from “Pawn Stars” where they basically call it a useless piece of fluff with no real purpose.
This software, at least to me, seems to be aimed at not making them a valid laptop but instead just a really, really big phone.
If you’ve always dreamed of playing “Candy Crush” on a big screen then now’s your big chance. Other than that, I really don’t see the benefit to the customer.
Chromebooks just got a lot more interesting because Android apps now run on the Chrome OS laptops. Google first announced an experiment to get Android software on its Chrome OS devices back in June, even showing off one of them on stage. Details were scant at the time but on Thursday, Google shed more light on the process: It built special software that runs on top of Chrome OS called the Android Runtime for Chrome.
This runtime is the secret sauce for getting the Android apps to run on a non-Android device. ArsTechnica asked Google about the details and got this response:
The app code is all running on top of the Chrome platform, specifically inside of Native Client. In this way the ARC (Android Runtime for Chrome) apps run in the same environment as other apps you can download from the Chrome Web Store, even though they…
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The Red Door- Revisited
Remember my post on a certain national toy chain’s door colors?
Well, I don’t know if they read this blog (probably not), but there’s been changes!
The huge yellow front is gone, replaced by a neutral silver.
More importantly, they paid attention to the actual door colors. HUGE improvement.
Entrance is a welcoming yellow:
The exit is the standard “Do Not Enter” red:
Combined, the user finally knows which is which:
A huge improvement. It’s good to see a company realize their errors and correct them.
Now, if only their labels made any sense:
25+ apps to make your everyday life easier
Yet another list of “Must Have” apps, but since I just got a new phone it could prove useful. Have a look…
Misfit announces Flash, a screen-less activity tracker that will cost under $50
This is actually kind of cool. One usage I can see is giving it to my daughter to help motivate her to walk a bit more on the treadmill. It’s simple enough that she wouldn’t necessarily feel like she’s wearing a pedometer to school.
On Tuesday, Misfit announced Flash, its second wearable product. It’s a disk-shaped activity tracker that is covered in soft plastic. It will retail for under $50 when it goes on sale in October.
The Flash is a sequel to Misfit’s first wearable activity tracker, Shine. The primary difference is that the Shine is $99.99 and is made out of machined aluminum, while the less expensive Flash is made of plastic. Like the Shine, the Flash will be able to track steps, sleep and other forms of activity and sync it with the Misfit app.
Flash won’t require nightly charging, because it lacks a screen, so it can draw power for months from a watch battery. Instead of a screen, Flash will work like one big button: Tap the front and embedded LEDs will light up, allowing you to check progress toward your daily activity goal.
As Google and Apple continue to expand…
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Poor design in plumbing fixtures.
Hello everybody,
I’m trying to get back into the swing of things around here and decided to start with a small post about an everyday item that has been driving me nuts.
Have a look at the picture below. See a picture of a kitchen sink with the water going? This is the sink in my office’s break room. Notice how TINY that neck is? It is literally IMPOSSIBLE to use this sink without having to mop up the resulting mess behind it on the backsplash. You can’t rinse a cup, fill a bottle and God help you if you want to wash a dish.
I have no clue why the building (one of the biggest and nicest in Atlanta, by the way) would install such an obviously poor choice for a faucet. If you look, it is not a question of lack of space height-wise as there is a good 2-3 feet above the sink. My only thoughts are either A- it was cheaper or B- the person just didn’t care about functionality.
OK, I’ve complained about a faucet for way too long now. It’s just the little things that makes life harder than it needs to be that really get under my skin.
Something more substantial next time, promise.
– Jay
Boot-to-Desktop and Start Button Coming to Windows 8
Soooo…. Windows 8.1 = Windows 7.
Gotcha.
No IPO hints as Twitter’s Costolo focuses on simplicity and security
It actually surprised me that Twitter hasn’t already had an IPO. If FB got BIGMONEY then Twitter should get HUUGGEMONEY. There are people that live on Twitter but only drop into FB once a day.
Now that it’s been a year since Facebook went public, the next big IPO circus is likely to involve Twitter. CEO Dick Costolo — as expected — didn’t announce concrete plans for such an IPO Wednesday during his appearance at D11, but held forth on a number of interesting topics during his session.
Advertising seems to be booming at Twitter (although Costolo wouldn’t share any numbers) but while Twitter is working more and more with traditional media companies, it doesn’t see the need as of yet to start creating its own news content, Costolo said.
“I see us partnering more with news organizations,” he said. He thinks of Twitter as a tool for news organizations and individuals to distribute content and while it’s messy at times, Costolo doesn’t seem to think that Twitter has a responsibility to verify the content itself; it does, however, want to help news…
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Kickstarter App
I’m shocked that it’s taken this long for this to happen.
Kickstarter has been a huge booster for the iOS device ecosystem, and now it’s joining it. On Thursday, the crowdfunding company announced its first iOS(s AAPL) app, for the iPhone and iPod touch. It’s free and on the App Store now.
On the Kickstarter company blog, the site’s three co-founders said when translating the Kickstarter web site to a smaller screen they decided to highlight three specific aspects of the service: searching for new projects, keeping up to date with the ones you are backing, and tools for project creators.
The app includes some handy mobile features, like push notifications for backers to let you know if Facebook friends have backed any of the same projects as you. For creators, there’s an option to turn on notifications so they can see new pledges in real-time. They also get a project dashboard and the ability to take photos and…
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Red Paint Usability Blog 