[Personal UX/UI review] importance of designing in customers' view

Issue: blocking view of average Korean adult passengers

Recommendation: lower the black bar for better view

[Personal UX/UI review] User control

<Product: Google Map web page on Safari>

Positive: convenient quick access button to full fledged app or download

Issue: no close button on screen

Recommendation: provide an exit button for full screen view

Lesson: usability rule#3 let users control app

[Personal UX/UI review] signage designs and promotional message in subway

Positive: positive expression for restrictive message

Context: The yellow flyer states "We welcome credit cards for 5,000 KRW or above purchase" where the sales person could have said "We don't take credit cards below 5,000 KRW." I thought that this is a smart approach to turn a negative message to positive. 

Positive: simple but intuitively understandable 

Lesson: symbolize things if they are common to users 

Issue: both signages have the same direction (redundancy) 

Context: The signage on the left and right both included opposite end destinations. If you are a first time visitor for this station following colors and station names, you will stop and wonder at least once at the signage to make sure you're heading down to the correct path. This is unnecessary because choosing either path will lead to the same second floor of this subway basement. Passengers don't need to stop here and spend time to choose directions but stop on the second floor of the basement because redundancy means inefficiency which leads to wasting people's precious time.

Recommendation: if two directions on signages are the same, delete both directions and leave them empty to avoid confusion and unnecessary time for passengers to stop to figure out which one goes where

[Personal UX/UI review] Fitt's Law on lip moisturizer

<Product: Neutrogena's lip moisturizer>

Positive: less hand movement on moisturizer by putting rotation component right below of a cap 

Lesson: even in real-life (or "offline") design, less movement works! (c.f. Fitt's Law application on for online products)

[Personal UX/UI review] Apple iOS's standby mode for Voice Memos

<Product: Apple iOS 7>

Issue: when wanting to stop recording after users' screen went black, we need to unlock the phones first 

Recommendation: provide a stop icon for Voice Memo even on standby mode (c.f. Podcasts' app's standby mode below)

[Personal UX/UI review] Google Sheet's plus button location

<web app: Google Sheets>

Issue: forcing users to make an unnecessary mouse movement to all the way to the left whenever making a new tab

Recommendation: move the plus button ("+") on the right side of the last worksheet tab of the far right

[Personal UX/UI review] Jihachul's history and iOS's scroll-down summary

<app: Jihachul>

Positive: history function readily available when searching for a subway station 

Lesson: always consider providing a 

menu of users' most frequently selected function 

<function: scroll-down summary on iOS>

Issue: displaying a useless space even when there is no schedule

Recommendation: shrink the Calendar space to fit schedule amount (e.g. if no schedule, shrink the space all the way!)