Alex Poole

User experience consultant

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Author: Alex Poole

How Agile and UX can work together

Posted on January 20, 2017 by Alex Poole · 2 Comments

The UX process and the Scrum sprint format don’t naturally sync together. Like a relationship, you have to work at it for both parties to be happy.

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Poster or stamp? Use sensible defaults for product previews

Posted on November 9, 2015 by Alex Poole

I love the London Transport Museum shop, especially the classic posters. I love how they provide a preview pane with an everyday object so you can imagine how the poster might look in your home. However, I don’t love this ridiculous default size when you first arrive on the page – makes me think I’m […]

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Avoid jobs advertised as “UI/UX Designer”

Posted on February 6, 2015 by Alex Poole · 1 Comment

Jobs such as “UI/UX Designer” are often advertised in France and some other countries – but you should think twice before applying even if you have a background in visual design. They may indicate that the company misunderstands UX or doesn’t really value it enough.

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Plan ahead when designing semi-transparent overlays

Posted on January 14, 2015 by Alex Poole

This is a web version of the common problem you see in subtitled films – white text on a white background is going to be very hard to read (see Gaîté lyrique). I always prefer automatically overlaid text to have a dark mask behind it to guarantee sufficient contrast. The consumerist website tries to avoid […]

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Use sensible defaults on forms

Posted on January 14, 2015 by Alex Poole

This search form on iLounge seems to have archives going back to the birth of Christ, either that or they’re not using a sensible default start date.  

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Supermarket receipt with categories

Posted on October 15, 2014 by Alex Poole · 1 Comment

While on holiday I spotted another small yet great innovation for an everyday object. Here’s a supermarket receipt with the products you bought, not listed simply in the order they were scanned, but grouped together into categories.

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Gift-wrap with guidelines

Posted on October 1, 2014 by Alex Poole

A simple yet useful innovation to help you cut your wrapping paper straight.

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Don’t ask, just do it!

Posted on September 12, 2014 by Alex Poole

Yes, I’m browsing from a mobile – just give me the mobile version by default please.

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The New Yorker has a great new responsive design… shame the adverts spoil it

Posted on July 22, 2014 by Alex Poole

Update – Only took them 2 days to fix it – well done New Yorker! The New Yorker unveiled its new responsive redesign today, and was reviewed positively. It’s true that it is very nice, but I think the adverts pollute the clean aesthetics, and worse, they think responsive break-points don’t apply to them!

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UX is for the whole life of a site, not just the design stage

Posted on July 21, 2014 by Alex Poole

This is the branch locator page for BNP Paribas on the French island of La Réunion. As you can see, the default zoom level in the Google maps widget is set a little bit too low! I’ve adjusted it to a more useful zoom level below. This is a good example that shows why UX […]

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Featured articles

  • How Agile and UX can work together
  • Avoid jobs advertised as “UI/UX Designer”
  • Playing Top Trumps with UX
  • Good UX should bridge the divide between online and offline worlds

Original research

  • Which Are More Legible: Serif or Sans Serif Typefaces?
  • Fighting bad typography research
  • Eyetracking metrics (book chapter)
  • How do people find and recognise browser bookmarks?

Good vs bad UX

  • Poster or stamp? Use sensible defaults for product previews
  • Plan ahead when designing semi-transparent overlays
  • Use sensible defaults on forms
  • Supermarket receipt with categories
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