#good ux

Week 9 of Good and Bad UX!

The first is an example of Good UX, Bank of America has a great app for mobile that has well organized layouts that are easy to manage. And its notifications and alerts are spot on when someone uses your card.

Week 4 of Good and Bad examples of UX.

The first image is a great example of good UX, it has a solid visual hierarchy, with a white foregorund, that suround the images into their own category box.

For this week, I decided to do the same object for both good and bad UX. I hope that’s okay. Today I’m going to be talking about the Apple Pencil. I think there are very good and very bad aspects of the device.

The Good: It works incredibly well. The response on the screen of an iPad is very good, and Apple did a great job making sure iPads communicate well with the Apple Pencil. You can use it and the device can tell if you’re using it on the side of the tip rather than the pointed tip. It also charges really fast. I plugged it in for about 10 minutes today and it got up to 70% battery from 5%.

For this week, I have picked two examples that I use in my every day life. 

First up, the bad. The Hydroflask “sport top,” designed to kind of be like a sippy cup. It would be great, if not for the fact that the plug that’s supposed to seal the cap when it’s upside down leaks. It has leaked in bags of mine before, though luckily it was in outside pockets of a water-resistant bag, so none of my electronics were damaged. I need to replace the cap with a regular one, but it’s so convenient to sip, despite its flaw. I like the feeling of the softer mouthpiece, the handle is nice. It just leaks. This has become my car water bottle so that I can have water when I’m out doing things, but it doesn’t have to come anywhere else.

Onto the good. I really enjoy my Power Beats headphones. They were a gift, I wasn’t sure I was going to like them, but I do. They are simple to use and pretty easy to pair to all of my devices, Apple or not. I like the around-ear style, because it makes them good for walking or running, or studying. I think they actually cancel noise quite decently, having worn them on a few planes with screaming kids that I didn’t even really notice with these on. In addition, they’re aesthetically pleasing to me, because baby pink is my favorite color, but the purple pairs with it very well.

As an example of good UX, I chose this mirror setup in the restroom of the Disney Family Museum in San Francisco. They’re visually appealing, and they also kind of form a “hidden Mickey”. I just thought that the bathroom as a whole was really well put together as well, the sinks are orange/red accents and then there are red/grey tiles on the wall to the right.

I thought Slack's login was an iron-pressed thing of beauty that couldn’t possibly be improved on. I was wrong.

They have been known for their easy sign-in process with a cute message saying “forget your password? too long to type? click below and we’ll send you a magic email link.” And the magic email link signs you into all workspaces at once. HOORAY SLACK!

But what if you didn’t have to type your email?

What if you didn’t have to do the hard work of opening your email app?

Stop wondering and start slacking

The latest flow takes care of anyone signed into the phone with Google and opens their email client (regardless of which it is) to show the magic sign-in link.