eliminate the miscellaneous category
I stopped for lunch at a fast food place with one of those Coke machines that has dozens of drink options. Whenever I encounter them I briefly ponder how they came up with the IA. Having a category for Low/NoCal and Caffeine Free at the top level makes it harder to find beverages that are…
Read moreOn a business trip to London I had the dubious pleasure of staying in a hotel with a “smart” room. As is typical with a red-eye, I arrived sleep deprived and collapsed for a nap. I woke up groggy and in the dark, uncertain as to time of day with the drapes tightly drawn. I…
Read moreWe’ve all been there–wracking our brains to come up with a descriptive label for a category and finding that the easiest way to describe the set is by what it ISN’T. Ideally in a carefully designed information architecture this will be relegated to iterative draft work and not make it into the live version of…
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Comfort food gets all the press, but I also indulge in comfort reading (or listening, in the case of audio books). Which is how I came to be searching for Cold Comfort Farm, a delightful book by Stella Gibson that fills the role of mac-n-cheese for the brain nicely. Sadly, I was thwarted in my…
Read moreI saw the picture with the shoes earlier in the week and initially had a feeling that this photo might be somehow relevant to UX design. However, as I’ve thought about it, the line of shoes is really just a low-tech version of the “take a number” machines encountered at delis and shops. And yet…
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