Organizing UX for Large Scale Mobile Apps

Just wanted to share a few pics of the inter-workings of designing a large scale app that crosses vast social media integration and numerous content touch points. A considerable amount of time is put into organizing, structuring and designing such a product so that it will make sense for end users and appear simple and easy to use.



Forgoing these steps at this level will ensure confusion and ultimately the absence of returning users to your ecosystem. I have taken traditional website building methods and modified them to develop a system of what I am calling a 'Tap Map'. Very similar to a site map, but in this instance you can easily see where particular parts of the app are nested inside each of other and how many taps deep a particular piece of content is. This also allow certain pieces of information to be accessed in multiple ways inside the app without having flow lines and arrows running wild.

Mobile is definitely a different animal and as such the traditional web way of tackling things no longer makes as much sense. Within the confines of iOS and android each screen has to have special attention paid to it whereas in many web design instances content flows more freely and design is more about building buckets to drop things in. A few dozen page designs for the web will quickly turn into a few hundred for an app if attention to detail is taken into account. Adding touch and gestures to the user experience changes the architecture and every element has to fit in a particular place within the fixed dimensions of the screen. Links and more info to come soon - once this product is launched. Big stuff on the way, stay tuned.

Skewing Truth With Design

Dartmouth College Political Scientists recently released a report saying that infographics might be the best way to alter peoples beliefs about a particular subject. More specifically, they were looking at two items, 1. "people tend to resist unwelcome information", and 2. "whether graphical corrections may be more effective than text" at changing peoples minds. What they found: "Graphical corrections are also found to successfully reduce incorrect beliefs among potentially resistant subjects and to perform better than an equivalent textual correction."

Well, duh! Designers have known this for decades. This is how we get you to buy a coke, think Target clothes are cool and convince you to buy a product you don't need. Design is a visual solution to deliver information. However, when that information is handled poorly or in a misleading manner it becomes propaganda.

Bloomberg's Businessweek created a nice example of how easy it is to visually skew non-related data to mislead consumers into false conclusions. These are pretty funny but they do illustrate a real truth of how design could transform into propaganda.



One of my favorite books dealing with this issue is by Edward R Tufte. In The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Tufte deals extensively with the propensity of designers to unknowingly (or knowingly) skew data when compiling it visually. Trying to make data fun or decorative lends itself to creating propaganda if the information is not properly cared for and treated with great respect.





Tufte goes into great detail along with real world examples of how data should be treated and displayed to attain the most unbiased positions possible. An obvious must read for anyone creating infographics, but more importantly a must read for anyone who is interested in being able to recognize false information and disseminate the truth.

Obviously people look at graphics before digging into text. We are visual creatures. The old example was a newspaper - have you ever read the entire thing, or just flipped through to find something interesting? Now its, do you read all the text on all the websites you visit - or just look for something interesting and then dig in? Why does a book have a fancy cover and not simply the first page of text from the book?

A better study for Dartmouth might have been to calculate the percentage of false information that is communicated through misleading graphics instead of trying to decide if design works.

Small Businesses & Domain Name Strategy

In the past few months I have sat down with several small business owners looking to kick off their online presence. Typically these clients have little to no money and just need something - anything - online that makes them look more legit than just having a business card.

Concerning selecting a name for the business domain… Usually business owners have an idea in mind of what they want, normally they have been through a hundred names on Godaddy only to find out that Name.com is taken and is for sale for $100,000. Discouraging as this may seem it really presents a great opportunity to capitalize on a longer domain name that could actually be more relevant in a niche market.

Everything goes back to the user so when selecting a potential name, I like to recommend imagining how people search using Google. While there is obviously something to be said for having a short memorable name there is also an equal if not greater argument for selecting a domain that coincides with how people search.

For instance, pretend sites with close to identical information on each site: GlobalTextiles.com vs. CustomRestaurantUniforms.com (just fake examples)

People will inevitably search for terms like "Custom Restaurant Uniforms" and Google will index such a site with a domain that is a search term much higher. People will rarely search "Global Textiles" looking for custom-made restaurant uniforms, and those that do search for "Global Textiles" might be looking for info on world textile import/exports or some other materials. Even if the legal company name was "Global Textiles Inc." a different website name (or sub-site) with a more specific product domain name to the actual product is going to yield a higher return for smaller businesses with little to no brand recognition and marketing budgets. Additionally this more generic domain could actually be more memorable when speaking with potential leads.

Just something to keep in mind while spending nights searching for the next cool.com domain name and when really trying to utilize the internet to your sales advantage. And also remember, if you are not updating your site's content regularly then it doesn't matter what you name it. Your dusty old site with a recent post from a year and a half ago is pretty much worthless and showing up on page 12 of googles search results. You could pretty much rename it turd.com cause that is about all its worth. (And incase you are wondering, yes turd.com is taken - but available for the low low price of only…)

Art Night in Dallas

Saturday evening we visited two openings in town. The first stop was Bob Poe's exhibition "Line and Substance" at Ross Akard Gallery. Mr. Poe's new work was divided into two collections and he was also rendering live sketches of a burlesque model.



The first focused on highly textural backgrounds made from found objects (ranging from footballs to computer keyboards), then washed in solid colors to create a seamless background effect. Different figures were painted directly on the surface of the canvas, looking almost cut out of the found objects.



Pictured above:
Paradise Chucked
Mixed Media on Canvas
$4800, available at Ross Akard Gallery

Bob Poe's second collection was composed by layering vibrant gesture drawings of miscellaneous nude body parts in oil crayon and acrylic paint on canvas.



Pictured above:
Sleeping and Bleeping
Oil Crayon & Acrylic on Canvas
$1,600, available at Ross Akard Gallery

The second stop on the tour was the closing reception for artist Carmen Menza's exhibition "Shed Some Light" at the Belmont Hotel in Oak Cliff. Menza also performed with her band later that evening on the patio overlooking the downtown Dallas skyline.

Her new abstract works in oil on canvas were presented in a large variety of sizes - some with red dots on the placards indicating they were sold. The pieces had a nice layer of texture, some very bold and others more muted.



Pictured above:
Beautiful World
40 x 60"
Oil on Canvas, available via CarmenMenza.com

The exhibit ended with Menza's band on the patio playing a variety of original music.



Pictured above:
Carmen Menza & her band