JoelMarsh

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!

That's fair, and I am glad we're on the same page about privacy. It's important to us, but also hard as hell to communicate that we're not trying to steal or read your stuff. :)

As far as the product... the efficiency is due in part to the behavioral algorithm and in part to the information architecture of the app itself.

The archive and inbox are literally structured in a way that makes it easier and faster to get to everything, find old attachments, search for content, and so on. A deeper explanation of that part is gonna get long without some visuals, so if I may, let's leave it there and we'll post more info when we can (remember that we're only proving our concept with this site).

The behavioral algorithm basically treats everything you do in email as information about what and who is important, and we use that to make sure that important stuff rises to the top, conversations are threaded in a useful way, and so on. As far as I know, there isn't another app that does it like that.

For now (until we get a little further and create some more explanatory materials) hopefully that satisfies your question.

Thanks. :)

drunkenfly beat me to it. Thanks. :) As far as I know we revoke our own access when the test is complete (although that doesn't come with an automatic notification. When you get the email with your results, you're welcome to check, and if it isn't revoked, please let me know: foundersATgetremark.com.

The next sentence is: "...it will be a downloadable email app for desktop and mobile."

Well, we're not a Thunderbird plugin, but you're getting warm. :)

In the footer of the site (the FAQ type text) we explain a bit, but all we do is count things from your inbox. The actual content of messages or attachments is never downloaded (just the headers and such), and we only have read-only access for a short period of time.

Nothing is re-organized or moved or labeled or anything like that.

WOW, the response is huge right now! We appreciate your patience if the test takes a while (your results will be emailed to you, so you don't have to wait).

Thanks for doing the test! And for explaining a bit about how you use email, that's helpful.

We won't do any of those things, actually. Our inbox/app is structured much differently and your own natural behavior informs the algorithm (no manual teaching/rules required).

Everything is controllable if you want to control it, but it's the other side that's interesting: if you want to be lazy and let things pile up, Remark will do the housekeeping and make sure you don't miss anything.

Your labels will be safe, and we will never delete anything automatically.

I am one of the founders of Remark and would love your feedback! I would really love to hear your result and a description of how you handle email!

It is tempting, with articles about company models, to go away with a "this is how to be successful" mentality, but I think that is wrong.

The design of a company appeals to a certain kind of people, regardless of the model. Do you put a premium on autonomy? Work at Valve! Like structured environments? Try Microsoft. Prefer strong leadership? What about Apple?

Or whatever.

Success is not the take-away. Employee-model fit is.