Using interface to make a timely statement

In The US, this past week of July 4th was marked by violence that many of us are still wrapping our heads around.

I wanted to take a minute to show some timely design that is addressing violence of this last week.

Beyonce 

Beyonce's Call to End Police Violence

Beyonce’s website is a content rich experience that immerses Beyonce fans in lush visuals and bold typography.

At the top of Beyonce’s content-aggregation style site, is a call to action in bold typography that stands out amongst the visuals on her site. Likely run on a Content Management System, it is a versatile and swift way to respond to national events.

 

Weiden and Kennedy

Wieden and Kennedy Front Page takeover

Wieden and Kennedy take over their front page.

 

Wieden and Kennedy take over the front page of their site with an epitaph addressing the quiet, emotional and psychological side of violence. Forgoing the usual agency portfolio, careers and contact site organization, the only link from the front page is to the Twitter hashtag #blacklivesmatter.

 

Uber

Uber Replaces cars with Peace Signs

Uber is no stranger to using their app interface to express opinions. In this instance they are asking for users to contemplate the violence of the last week by changing their car icons into peace signs.

 

Thoughts are with the families of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile and the officers of the Dallas Police Department.

Starbucks app gold experience

The Starbucks app has been successful at separating me from money and consuming way more cappuccino than I should.

Last week I hit gold membership.

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Along with the color change, I was treated to a multi screen flow showing me the features of being a gold member .

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Not a bad experience for a new gold member.

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Yes please!

Keeping Wireframes Fresh pt 2: Revisiting Your Motivations

As an Information Architect, I deliver annotated wireframes for a multi-system learning platform. I spend hours grooming stories , getting the full set of requirements right, sketching, wireframing and making flow diagrams. This level of preparation is so that I can review these documents with 10 smart people who will have questions, very detailed questions. Quality Assurance will develop scripts based off of my wireframes. Engineering teams will print them out and ask follow up questions if there is any sort of confusion.

I’m invested in making these wireframes look great and tell a complete story. They’re shades of grey, white and blue and I want them to look fantastic.
It gets the idea across to the product owners, who may have varying levels of knowledge with the platform.
It’s my chance to have a say in the future of this software and I want it to be bold, beautiful and clear to use.

My customers are more than the millions of students and instructors that use the end product. It’s also the people I see everyday and work shoulder to shoulder with.

Walking out of a fifteen minute meeting with a “We’re done, have a great weekend” is a killer feeling.

Uncomplicated, but creative

As an Information Architect working on legacy data, I usually have to work incrementally.

Legacy Data: Def Someone else (hopefully smarter than you) designed some of the core functionality (many years ago) and I’m making improvements and fixes to address new user needs, update UI patterns and keep up with technology.

I need to balance the need for simple solutions and keeping myself creatively limber.

The best practice that I can recommend to any UXer is keeping a sketchbook. Sometimes you’ll come up with five interesting solutions and you know that the needed solution is fairly simple, and straightforward. Sketch out those other ideas. Iterate on them. I find that it lets me explore other avenue and I can put that back into the final design. Maybe there is a subsystem or alert that you’re not thinking about that you’ll figure out.

If you are not on a tight deadline, maybe you can present them at your first review as an alternative.

Mozilla University Design Challenge 09

Parsons participated in the 2009 Mozilla Design Challenge with two other universities, all addressing the issue of how to visualize the user’s browser history in a meaningful way.

My solution was the Unique History Timeline.

The Unique History Timeline is focused on
helping the user to remember unique sites that he or she might have visited and uses visual and timeline queues to help refresh their memory.

The Unique History Timeline has the following features:

  • Thumbnail screen shots of individual sites
  • A List view and Timeline view for user preference
  • Separates frequently visited sites from those unique one off sites, collapsing the listings in the history window for quicker browsing.