JoelMarsh's comments

As long as you have asked "does this improve the experience enough to build?" I think we are in complete agreement. That is good UX thinking, in my opinion. :)

That particular example is from Dan Ariely's book "Predictably Irrational".

All of the cognitive biases are described on Wikipedia. The links are in the articles.

On second thought, I might agree with you. I have added a note to that article to clarify.

Author here.

I agree. After a few minutes of after-thought I have updated the article to reflect this feedback.

Thanks, everyone. I appreciate the input.

Thank you!

Registered users.

Authors.

Articles.

Comments.

Did I miss anything significant?

Interesting. Great comment!

I am the author. Thank you for pointing out my mistake: I TOTALLY AGREE about the new tab/window issue, and I have now fixed it. That must have been brutal on a mobile device.

It was intended to open a new window when linking from the "directory" post, but going from post-to-post in sequence shouldn't open 31 new tabs. They were posted one-at-a-time, so I didn't realize what would happen when being viewed as a set of 31.

A rather cringe-worthy oversight, I would say. It was indeed a Tumblr theme setting, which I changed, and also 31 instances of hand-editing the html of the articles, which was super fun. ;)

Apologies to everyone who suffered and thank you for the feedback. I just wish I had noticed sooner!

As someone you would call a "UX Specialist" I would be embarrassed to have that site in my portfolio. It's a wireframe with working links.

That being said... who voted this Site of the Year? Just because people who don't know anything about web design give out awards doesn't mean they are valid or credible.

It seems like a pretty big leap to go from that misguided award to the conclusion in the title.

It's about time.

This was nice to read. Let me know if there is anything I can help with (seriously).

I respect the fact that you asked. :)

There are lots. Not to be self-serving, but I post all the best links I find on www.thehipperelement.com, if you feel like scanning through them.

But a few, off the top of my head are:

- www.alistapart.com - http://www.uie.com/articles/ (run by Jared Spool, I think) - www.smashingmagazine.com is a bit hit and miss, but what they lack in quantity they make up for in quantity. - www.unbounce.com - www.goodui.com is a good, quick, visual reference for best practices. You could make a career just from enforcing some of those, haha.

And these two books would lay a good foundation in general:

- "Web Form Design" by LukeW (his blog is also interesting) - "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug

If you only spent a few hours on those you'd be ahead of the game. And if there is anything you feel is missing from the world, let me know on Twitter and maybe I can write something about it. @HipperElement

Hopefully that helps.

Agreed.

Your thoughts are not uncommon, unfortunately, but they come from a lack of, or confusing, information... not a high level of bullshit.

And oddly enough, I wrote an article about that too. :) Maybe this will help:

http://thehipperelement.com/post/47950319899/do-you-have-the...

I love this comment, thanks for writing it. There is a DEFINITELY a theory and a method to design. I would never say otherwise, and you're absolutely right.

The second part of your comment was precisely what I was getting at: people who hijack "UX" or the "design perspective" as a way of justifying their preferences without any further discussion.

I literally saw this happen the day I wrote this post. They offered no other explanation than "The design perspective says..."

If you're working with a grid, you can certainly discuss how something fits or doesn't fit, or works within that grid. Colours have meaning, hierarchy is crucial in aesthetics and usability, and typography is a whole discipline of its own. I wholeheartedly agree.

If someone knew all of that and used it to justify their choices, they wouldn't need to co-opt the "design perspective" as their argument of choice.

It's when someone says that "Blue is the best colour for links" or "the 960 grid is the most usable" or "sans serif is the most readable" — from a design perspective — that we have a problem.

Thanks again.

That has been my title for several years. If you can be a User Experience Designer or an Information Architect (both well-established job titles), what is wrong with "(User) Experience Architect" if you do both?

No, you're right. I wasn't aiming at a "be-all, end-all" post though... just highlighting some common ways people piggy-back their preferences on "UX". However, your suggestion is good and I added it to my (relatively short) list of articles-to-do. To be fair, a good UX conversation can take many forms depending on the project and context, but there are certainly key points to cover no matter what.

I have written about good ux before:

http://thehipperelement.com/post/51160057897/ux-is-a-science...

http://thehipperelement.com/post/51569751954/protip-tuesday-...

Billion dollar companies are still staffed by humans, as far as I know. "Companies" don't do anything. Their employees do.

Flattr's blog post seems to have a bit of that "not fair!" tone to it, which they - for better or for worse - don't actually have the right to say.

I can definitely see the argument from Twitter's side, even if I don't agree with it. But more than that: these are Twitter's terms! You can't roll in and start arguing for benefit-of-the-doubt with the people that wrote the terms for their own platform.

If you build your app on another company's platform to monetize their platform and they decide you can't, you're just falling into a trap you set for yourself. Even if it would be cooler if they allowed it.

Thanks for the feedback, (I don't think you're a d*) and you're basically right. This site, though, isn't actually a product (yet). It's a test, to prove our inbox concept. Like glorified customer research, in a good way.

That being said, maybe we could have been more explanatory. It's hard to know where to land for a "teaser" sort of thing. We'll think of you when we make the "real" product site later. ;)

Thanks again!