As the weather cools off in one part of the world and everyone’s attention shifts to upcoming holidays, our UXperts are sharing the websites, apps, and even products they’re thankful for this year. We asked a few of them to tell us the designs they love, so you can discover them too:
Popping open a message or bundle is a delightful experience. There is no reader view, preview panel, or back button — a fundamental difference between Google Inbox and other email clients. Instead, everything happens right there in the list of expanding and collapsing messages. I love the concept and appreciate the hard work that went into crafting something so original to solve such a typical problem!
What struck me most about it is how the whole experience works across all mediums. From an audio-fuelled, video-blazing interactive microsite to well thought out unboxing and presentation. They used high quality materials and built touch controls directly into the aluminium frame.
It all felt incredibly connected. My expectations throughout the whole experience just kept increasing and I was even more delighted when all of this was extended with a beautifully crafted mobile app for custom sound control and audio playback.
It’s a great product that was designed with specific audience in mind all the way through, which is key. When designing digital products we often forget the bigger picture: experience happens before and after not just within, and I think that’s an important point to remember at all times.
The challenge I’d imagine in designing an app like this is the wealth of data and information you could communicate to the user. The designers at PocketGuard have done this very effectively and brilliantly distilled a lot of data down into understandable, digestible chunks that help even the most financially challenged see what is happening with their money. Some highlights:
I’m not a ‘finance guy’, and numbers have never really been my jam, but I find myself enthralled with the way PocketGuard has turned something that’s traditionally been a major chore into a beautifully designed and engaging way to manage my finances.
Visually, the typography choices are super — check the harmony between the playful main serif and the crisp all caps of its condensed counterpart. It’s always great to see bold color contrast too, and the bitesize asymmetrical project blocks look great on every device.
There’s been a lot of chatter in the design community recently around a controversial tweet which suggested top designers are too busy to have portfolios, and even that they don’t need them. Jenny’s site is a pretty great piece of evidence to the contrary.
There’s even a tasty easter egg if you try and scale down your browser width. Bravo!
What websites or apps are you loving right now? Let us know in the comments!
