User Experience isn’t Everything

It seems the whole world has gone crazy for design lately. Engineers fancy themselves UXperts, Ad Sales is requesting PSDs to tweak, and Upper Management just doesn’t like that shade of blue.

Personally, I blame Pinterest.

Pinterest’s rapid ascent into mainstream lexicon* is enforcing the concept that the visual aspect is the only important piece of a product. Well, I’m here to tell you that that ain’t true.

Take the ‘To Do’ app Clear for example — it offers one of the most beautiful experiences available in the App Store. However, it’s also missing major features! It limits characters to an unusable minimum, there’s no indication of navigational hierarchy, the ‘down’ swipe intended to change screens constantly pulls down the iOS drop screen instead, and once you remove your completed tasks there’s no way to recover them (which is really annoying if you do it with an experimental swipe!!).

Path is another gorgeous app with insufficient use cases. The idea behind Path is that it’s the social network that limits your number of connections, thereby keeping your friend list to only your nearest and dearest. Well, that’s all well and good, but good luck trying to figure out how to post on another person’s Path! Instead of encouraging users to interact with one another, the featureset encourages them to fixate on their own Path. It quickly devolved into what Facebook began as — the pool into which Narcissus tumbled (complete with self-indulgent duckface photos to boot).

It’s been touted in the industry that 2013 is the ‘Year of Visual Web’ based on Pinterest’s continued success, redesigns by eBay that put imagery first, Facebook’s purchase of Instagram, and more. With the growing focus on aesthetics, let’s just hope people don’t forget about the features.

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*A bit of an aside, but according to the New York Times, young women are driving linguistic change more than any other demographic. And ~80% of Pinterest users in the US are female. Hmm…coincidence?

A Few Things I’ve Learned about NYC

So my 1st anniversary of living in New York City came and went — with me about 3,000 miles away at Oktoberfest in Munich. That, coupled with apartment hunting, a number of family birthdays, and the typical crush of getting out features before the year-end code freeze is why this post is about two months late. 🙂

Now the dust has settled and I’ve had a year to take in my new surroundings. Here are a few tidbits I’ve picked up this last year that may be helpful for NY n00bs:

  • If you are between 5’9″ and 6’1″, you must shield your eyes from pointy umbrella edges at all times when there is even a hint of rain (I learned this the hard way).
  • Manhattan subways are significantly more reliable, efficient, and easy to navigate than those of the Paris, DC, SF, or London systems.
  • Old school NYers still won’t enter Central Park between dusk and dawn.
  • Ordering food is a way of life.
  • You can’t feel guilty about having your laundry picked up, done, and delivered back perfectly folded. But you can complain about the smell of the detergent they use.
  • Manhattan is not impervious to natural disaster (as evidenced by Hurricane Sandy).
  • You can take a cab from the Upper East Side to Chelsea and it’ll only cost you $18.
  • NYers liken Staten Island more to New Jersey than to New York City (Staten Islanders included).
  • Staten Island’s amateur baseball team is called the Staten Island Yankees.
  • NYers swallow the ‘tt’ when they say “Manhattan.”
  • The Upper East Side has wider sidewalks in order to contain all the old people pushing baby carriages while holding large umbrellas in one hand, and multiple dog leashes in the other.
  • Techies are significantly more valuable out here than we are in the Bay Area.
  • NYers “stand on line,” not “wait in line.”
  • Shopping on 5th avenue is for tourists. Or the very, very rich.
  • Hiking trails are surprisingly accessible via public transportation.
  • If you’re going to take getting pushed and shoved personally, don’t get on the subway.
  • Walk with purpose or you’ll constantly be doing that awkward trying-to-pass-each-other-but-not-succeeding-until-the-fifth-feint dance with strangers.

So hopefully the world doesn’t end next month, and I’ll get enjoy another year in Manhattan.