The UX Critic: Instagram Notification – You have unseen notifications

The first time I saw this on my android phone, I thought “wait a second, you’re notifying me of a notification… why not just show me the notification?” I’m not alone. If you haven’t seen it, here’s what it looks like.

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The UX Critic: Alaska Air Inflight Entertainment

For this inaugural edition of The UX Critic, I’m going to show how Alaska Air could do a little better with their inflight entertainment. And by “a little better” I mean “actually useful”. Earlier in the year I took two trips with them, and neither time was I able to get their service to work. The second time was even more irritating because I already knew of one of the blockers to the system.

Part of the reason I’m picking Alaska Air for the first critique is that I really like them. There’s a few airlines I actively avoid. In May this year I actually paid quite a bit more to fly with Alaska – partially because the whole family was going, including my two & six year old kids. Having traveled often for business, I knew Alaska’s service could easily make the flight be enjoyable while other airlines have proven to me a track record to the contrary.

Alaska Air is always improving. I hope this critique will help them continue the pattern of great service. Continue reading

Announcing The UX Critic

What’s the purpose of The UX Critic?

This is an ongoing series to help create better designs for experiences with which I have no formal input in refining.

I’ve often said that one of the easiest jobs in the world is a critic. My goal with this project is not to tear down, mock or otherwise insult others who’ve put an unknown amount of effort into something. Instead, it serves two purposes:

  1. Provide valuable UX feedback to a company about their product
  2. Solve real-world UX challenges as examples for others to learn and grow

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