When the best user experience isn’t the best user experience
Posted by: Martin Pim-Keirle
I've recently been reading a fairly lightweight, factual book on our Kindle. It's probably been about six months since I've done this, as my wife has had sole custody of the thing for an age, apparently reading Agatha Christie's entire back-catalogue. Anyway, as when I first bought the thing, I have been marvelling at what a nice user-experience it provides. So light, so easy to read, so comfortable to have my thumb by the next-page button and so romp through any given book, never seems to need charging, and so on. It would be fair to say that, as far as I was concerned, the user-experience lacked nothing.
Having recently finished making a vast set of built-in bookshelves for our living room, I have finally got around to unpacking all of our books from their hiding place in the loft. To be fair, we have only been living here for two-and-a-half years...! One of the books unpacked was a rather nice hardcover version of the same book I'm reading on the Kindle. I now seem to recall buying it, nearly new, from a bootsale shortly after it came out. This seemed to be a good excuse to try out a back-to-back comparison, so that night I read the next 3 chapters from the book instead.
When less is more
Posted by: Martin Pim-Keirle
Today I'd like to say a few words about what isn't needed on a website, and about how leaving out some of the things that you think might be needed can actually make for a better user experience. But first, you'll need to have a look at a favourite site of mine. I've been visiting this particular site for months, and if you're at all into web development you've probably already seen it. The site is 'Today's Guardian' (or Observer, on a Sunday), created by Phil Gyford using the Guardian Open Platform. It's a brilliant example of how a great interface combined with a 'less is more' attitude to page content can result in a really great user experience.
