Webtorque

Are design hypotheses just posh opinions?

October 4, 2023 By Jonathan Baker-Bates 0 I am suspicious of designers who use the first person in the explanations of their designs.

Is a “Graphical Drop-down” Better than a Row of Icons?

June 4, 2016 By Jonathan Baker-Bates 0 At the trainspotting end of the UX spectrum of activity lie articles like this, from Information Architects Inc., which for some reason I find myself reading. While IA’s article is far too long and badly needs editing, the following occurs to me:

Are Small Hit Areas Easier To Hit?

June 26, 2013 By Jonathan Baker-Bates 0 The question of “fat finger” mistakes on touch screens came up in conversation the other day, together with the idea of making targets large to avoid this. At first, it seems sensible to make hit areas for controls on mobile devices as large as possible. But it was pointed out that, counter-intuitively, smaller hit areas…

Do High-Fidelity Wireframes Reduce Design Collaboration?

May 15, 2013 By Jonathan Baker-Bates 2 There’s some debate about the utility of “high-fidelity wireframes” at work at the moment. It’s a reasonably common topic in the UX chattersphere too, so I thought I’d expand on it here. Firstly, to avoid some potential misunderstandings – let’s make some assumptions about the domain we’re in:

What’s Worse Than A Pie Chart?

January 4, 2013 By Jonathan Baker-Bates 0 I dislike pie charts. I may even dislike people who use them. But even worse than a pie chart is a quite recent device that doesn’t (I don’t think) have a name. These are the circles that appear mostly in newspapers and magazines to illustrate some quantitative comparison – here’s an example of what I mean. This technique…