Rowena Leung

Temporary haunt of a UX hopeful. An archive of small delights and deficiencies.

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UX Sample: Rough Trade Records

While browsing Rough Trade’s store one day, I noticed an interesting feature that I’d never seen before: a place on the page to quickly drag and save items independent of a shopping cart. Admittedly, my screenshots are a little antiquated already, as they’ve changed the shop around quite a bit and have unfortunately done away with this idea. I suppose that, functionally, it doesn’t do anything that can’t be done with a regular shopping cart, but I thought it interesting to be able to hang on to something as if you were walking around a store clutching a record, debating whether you’re really up for paying $22 before tax for a couple of live rearrangements, however beautiful.

roughtrade1.png

An unobtrusive banner of space for something you’re eyeing that doesn’t take up too much of the page.

roughtrade2.png

What it looks like with an item, and the marking of the item itself.
I suppose it may have been more trouble...

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UX Moment: Moosti - Time Tracker

In an effort to outwit my procrastination, I’ve attempted to use the Pomodoro technique (work for 25 minutes, take a 5 minute break, repeat), and have relied on online timers for this. While I haven’t given the technique serious enough consideration to judge its ultimate efficacy, I have found that the inscrutably named time tracker, Moosti (formerly pomodoro.me—I believe the recent name change is to dissociate itself from the Pomodoro technique), is a great tool because the countdown time, shown clearly on the site, is extended to the browser tab, so you can see the time remaining in a work/break session without having to switch tabs.

Although this doesn’t sound like much, when you’re doing something, it’s not ideal to have the timer docked and taking up precious real estate, especially on smaller screens. The timer could also be intrusive, as it’s bright red-orange and rather...

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