Johan Lieu. Passionate product manager, UI/UX/IA devotee, enthusiastic gamer, fan of sci-fi epics and lover of all things internets. Previously Product at SurveyMonkey (Audience, Contribute, Rewards), Wufoo, JibJab, Evite, Sulake Oy (Habbo Hotel). Founded Pigskin Picker, and Dinner Party Smarty.
Five years Five years is a long time. Turns out, five years can also be a crazy short amount of time. Five years ago today, I quit my job. The plan was to take “six months off” (my so-called “Summer of Johan”) to recharge and in the meantime be the stay-at-home parent for our son. The time off was just supposed to last through that spring and summer and when he went back to school in the fall for…
Keep your Numbers Off of Me: Why Tournaments Support Better Communities than Ladders Really loved how this article captured why ladder systems in most games don’t work for me. They don’t feel fun, everyone collapses to the same best performing deck (killing creativity), and it just feels bad. Also, doesn’t hurt that Richard Garfield is the one who wrote it! 😬
Braess's paradox - Wikipedia : This is why traffic never seems to get better even after adding a bunch of roads or lanes. In fact, it usually just gets worse.
You Are not the User: The False-Consensus Effect : It’s important to remember you aren’t your users and you always need to test.
Great interview with Jim Barksdale from 2014 that I somehow missed. Barksdale is the man who coined this phrase: “Gentlemen, there’s only two ways I know of to make money: bundling and unbundling.” (via How to Succeed in Business by Bundling – and Unbundling )
(via Using Swipe to Trigger Contextual Actions ) While I understand the potential usability issues with swipe-to-do-X, I think at this point you should really know your users and know if they are going to be okay with it or not. No real hard and fast rules with UX, like all things UX.
People remember the bad more than the good. Users’ tendency to identify flaws in designs raises the bar for what they consider acceptable. Yup. (via The Negativity Bias in User Experience )
The Election Is Not Rigged. : So the election is not rigged. In fact, it’s anti-rigged. To rig an election, you would need (1) technological capabilities that exist only in Mission Impossible movies, plus (2) the cooperation of the Republicans and Democrats who are serving as the polling place’s election officials, plus (3) the blind eyes of the partisan pollwatchers who are standing over their…
Really good article from Norman Nielsen Group about the good and bad of WeChat. Super insightful. (via WeChat: China’s Integrated Internet User Experience )
This reads like a description of my personal hell. So glad I got out of there whilst I could. Your mind briefly drifts off and you think — “is this all really worth it? should I move to Seattle, Austin, or maybe even Florida?” After all there is no state tax and you could live a great quality of life there with an actual house with your beautiful family. (via This is Your Life in Silicon Valley —…
Summary: Mobile-navigation patterns make navigation unusable on the desktop and decrease the use of this important UI element. Porting an unchanged UI to a different platform hurts UX. (via Mobile First Is NOT Mobile Only )
Summary: Getting back to the homepage is about 6 times harder when the logo is placed in the center of a page compared to when it’s in the top left corner. (via Centered Logos Hurt Website Navigation )
Ugh, these are gross design patterns. They could be effective but man do they cheapen the brand. (via Needy Design Patterns: Please-Don’t-Go Popups & Get-Back-to-Me Tabs )
As a UX afficianado and someone who loves exporing apps and interations, I love so many things in this article: Mega menus are my jam! Pie menus are awesome on mobile! Marking menu’s should be a standard interaction for expert users everywhere! So much to love in this article. Summary: Selecting an option inside a menu depends on how far away that option is from the menu icon. Drop-down menus,…
Be cool, man, be cool. Summary: Websites must establish trust and present themselves as credible to turn visitors into customers. The methods that people use to determine trustworthiness on the web have remained stable throughout the years, even with changing design trends. (via Trustworthiness in Web Design: 4 Credibility Factors )
…rather than screwing around with bots, I want the tech industry to focus on solving these major annoyances and handling some of the common use cases I described that my phone ought to do better with by now. (via Dan Grover | Bots won’t replace apps. Better apps will replace apps. )
(via Alex St. John’s daughter responds to his ‘vile’ opinions | Polygon ) Amazing take down by his own daughter about women in tech.
…Yet it has not changed. The San Francisco skyline is not studded with new towers rising up to house the huddled masses. It’s still a pretty little city where only lucky rich people who got there a long time ago (or just plain new rich people) can afford to live. Yup. (via San Francisco: Build More Housing, Assholes )
Maintaining Success for the Long Term · The Macro : Love this line: “Yakety, yakety, yak. To steal a phrase, there’s a wonderful phrase somebody else used many years ago: “The nattering nabobs of negativism” will just prattle on endlessly.”
This is amazing. (via Over 8 billion “red envelopes” were sent over WeChat during Chinese New Year - Quartz )