[Design ideas] Tickspot, Moneywatch, Hotmail

Good design: Tickspot Errors

Tickspot is an online time tracking application. Their Website is simple, friendly and easy to use when things go well and when things break.

Error messages are clear, to the point and very hard to miss. The use of bright colors attract the eye without being too aggressive. Icons help with recognition.

(After submitting a form with errors)

Bad design: Moneywatch Lightbox

Moneywatch is the personal finance portal of bnet. The new design looks very good although it’s not really online yet.

Until the launch, bnet decided to display a linkless version of the site with a lightbox (modal window) explaining the redesign philosophy. In that window (but below the fold), people can signup to be notified when the new site launches.

Good ideas, bad execution. The lightbox is so well integrated in the Website’s grid that it looks like it’s part of the background. By definition, a lightbox is supposed to standout through a variety of techniques (shadows, contrast, positioning, etc). In this case, the alignment and fact that the lightbox is active when the page loads makes it very confusing for the user.

Interesting design: Hotmail email Unsubscribe

Hotmail needs no introduction. Although I’m not a big fan of the email client, the folks at Microsoft have good ideas.

They understood that good user-centered design is about anticipating user needs. Making it easier for users to cancel email subscriptions from the inbox is a nice touch; it might actually help reduce the number of legitimate emails categorized as Spam.

If you can give more control to users, do it.

(Upon opening a newsletter)

Suggested Reading:

• Don’t Force People to Stay on your Website
• [Design ideas] SAP, Bloglines, Gap checkout