From what I’ve read, modern elevator design generally focuses on how to make elevators more efficient. In other words, engineers try to group passengers by their destination floor, reducing average wait times. With that said, I came across a design blunder in Chicago’s John Hancock Center that makes me wonder if elevator designers have really […]

When designing software, it’s common practice to relegate some of the more obscure settings into an “advanced” tab. Personally, I don’t understand the attraction. Adding another tab to your settings window creates yet another thing for the user to worry about, and doesn’t really provide any benefit. Sure, you might be able to shorten the […]

When adding a new feature to an existing software product, many programmers and designers just sit down and create the look-and-feel from scratch. This is a mistake, since it leads to user interfaces that have little in common with the rest of the product. A much better approach is to study the existing features in […]

I understand the use of lowercase names for certain companies and products. Sometimes, it just looks better that way. But extending this practice to the buttons and navigation on a website or application puzzles me. Since we use capital letters for more than just decoration, adopting an “uppercase is bad” mentality threatens to reduce usability […]

I installed a new program today. Actually, I installed it three times. Why? Because I neglected to choose the right options for my computer from the littany of obscure choices on the installer screen. I discovered this after about two hours of trial and error for what should have been a 15 minute process. But […]

A customer recently asked me to help choose a laser printer from several Samsung models. So I went to the Samsung website, and located the list of available printers. Three or four of the models looked promising, so I tried to “middle click” on each product name to view the info in a new browser […]