UXperts Weigh In: Designs We Love, October Edition
With fall in full swing, now is a great time to expand your design horizons and check out some fresh ideas in web and app design. So we asked UXperts from across the globe to share some of the designs they’re loving, right now. Here are their top UX picks for October.
Caroline Williams, Senior Digital Design Manager at Wyndham Hotel Group
_Pick: _Untappd
As an avid Untappd user for quite some time, the thing I most appreciate about this app is how far it has come within the past few years. When it first launched, the UX was challenging, to say the least. But after paying close attention to user demand, the latest redesign proves to be a much more enjoyable experience (aside from the fact that you’re already using it with a beer in hand).
With each beer check-in, you can now add more detail about the serving style, purchase location, and flavor profile. The cleaned-up map view allows for a much quicker browsing experience, with easy access to beer lists from any venue or brewery around the world. You can also set alerts on certain beers and know when they’ve been added to a nearby venue.
With so many new features, there’s a lot of potential for cluttered navigation, but the app continues to focus on the core check-in feature. At any point throughout the browsing process, you’re never more than a simple click away from the ability to find or check-in that latest beer.
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Daniel Schutzsmith, Digital Technology Manager at Amnesty International
Pick: SmartNews
SmartNews is a news reader application available for iOS and Android. The application automatically categorizes content based on topic and source. There are several ways that this application stands out for its amazing UX and UI: Color Coding, Masonry Layout, Smartview, and Easy Sources.
Color Coding
The color coding of tabs makes it easy and fun to switch between them to see what new content there is. It brings a sense of playfulness by using primary colors but doesn’t make the UI feel contrived.
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Masonry Layout
Part of why the app works so well is the layout of articles in a masonry layout. It fits articles in much the same way a newspaper would. Contrast this to the article flow of another news reader like Flipboard and you’ll see why SmartNews’ layout is easier to scan. Even in small phone layouts, the articles are easy to read and scan through quickly.
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Smartview
A great feature of SmartNews is its Smartview that removes all the advertising and extra formatting from a web page and just gives you the article in a straightforward layout.
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This news reader has managed to solve many UX and UI challenges that several others have not. The developers are constantly making improvements, which makes me think we’ve only seen the beginning of what SmartNews can become as more users start to include it in their daily routine.
Ash Huang, UX Designer at Adobe XD
_Pick: _Indian Type Foundry
I’ve been into Indian Type Foundry lately. It’s a multilingual type house based in India and has so many beautiful faces available. Design is becoming more and more global, so it’s awesome to see designers from different backgrounds join forces and create something special together.
The website is also very pleasing to look at and unsurprisingly, features lots of beautiful type design. Although it’s really satisfying to see all of their faces at once, check out how they handle searching for fonts in different languages. The search result manipulator is really powerful and yet simple, so you can peep your results with different options like leading, tracking capitalization, and alignment.
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Yu Siang, Visual Designer at International Design Foundation
Pick: iTranslate Converse
There are many translation apps out there, but what I love about Converse is how simple it is. Unlike apps like Google Translate, Converse’s sole purpose is to, like its name suggests, enable people to converse in different languages. It’s dead simple to use: tap and hold when you speak, release to hear what you said translated into the other language. The great thing is, once you’ve selected 2 languages to translate (out of the 38 languages it supports), you just tap and hold to talk without having to toggle between input and output languages.
An interesting (and, I think, really smart) feature of Converse is that it asks users to flip the phone upside down because it claims it’ll detect voices better that way. That might be true (and in my own use, I do find the app to be pretty accurate at picking up words), but it has a side effect of making the app experience just that much more memorable. I’ll always remember Converse as the translation app that I use while my phone’s upside down.
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