Good user experience design is all around us. When something is designed very well, you don't think about it. You just run with it. And you are fustration-free.
As a user experience professional, however, I've trained my mind and eye to catch these sometimes small or even seemingly insignificant features from everything including websites, applications, devices and even dvd menus. Even then, If I am not careful, I like so many others outside of my field, am still capable of taking good user experience for granted.
Today, I was reading one of my usual favorite hoops blog - HoopsWorld.com. As a Knick fan, I've been following the summer long story of Carmelo Anthony's rumor of coming to the Big Apple. While reading today's story regarding that subject, I read a paragraph that I wanted to specifically share with my friends on my fantasy basketball league page. So I highlighted it, copied it and pasted it into the yahoo message board.
Right before I pressed "submit post", however, I caught something that was unexpected - as well as pleasant. It seems that the developers at Hoops World thought it would be nice to automatically include a "Read More at <link of article>" postfix after copied content for the user. I was almost ready to go into my step 3 of sharing the article by going back to the page and copying the URL in the address bar.
As a result, I was so happy with my new found web-feature that I decided to write an entire post about it. And below was the snippet I took along with the automatically created postfix. Thank you Hoops World!
"The Nuggets only won 17 games or something like that. I remember me saying, 'I hope Denver doesn't draft me. I hope Denver don't pick me.' At that time, Detroit had wanted me so everyone was thinking I was going to Detroit. I wanted to go to Detroit. I was like, 'Please, Denver, don't draft me! Please! Please!' Come to find out, they draft me. As I come out here, I'm like, 'I don't know nothing about Denver.' I tried to look on the internet and all I saw were mountains and I'm like, 'Oh shit, I can't do this. Man, I can't do this,'" Anthony said.
Read more NBA news and insight: http://www.hoopsworld.com/Story.asp?story_id=17715#ixzz13TGXCY7d
WWEUniverse.com was the first high exposure website I had the chance to art direct, architect and lead. Even now, I am proud of what it has accomplished over the past 2 years. With over 600,000 actively participating fans, WWEUniverse.com has gone through much growth - not just membership wise. Since it's inception in the spring of 2008, WWEUniverse has adapted to the needs and wants of WWE's die hard community - much to the credit of Corey Clayton, the undisputed community leader of WWE.com! I had the privilege of working with Corey ever since and together, we have worked tirelessly to improve the website in terms of content quality as well as user experience. And now, W3 and the International Academy of Visual arts has decided to honor the website's design and social networking prowess with the coveted W3 Silver Award for Social Networking.
