*** If you’re an aspiring ui/ux designer or if you’re already in the field or if you’re interested in reading about ui/ux, please visit 52weeksofux.com — these guys are good.

I recently discovered 52 Weeks of UX and was immediately drawn to reading the posts one after another. Porter and Brewer (both have the first name Joshua), are very talented ux people from Hubspot and Twitter, respectively. For 52 weeks (currently on week 51) they each dedicated their time to writing a blog post on their knowledge of ui/ux — that by the end of the 52 weeks, all of their posts could actually be compiled to make a very useful book about designing wonderful experiences for people. What’s ironic about this is how they’ve designed certain parts of their site. Don’t get me wrong, it’s quite simple, however, some of the stuff is not very user-friendly (especially for the people who haven’t been keeping up with each new week). Let me tell you why.

1) Like most blogs, we’re used to seeing the Previous and Next links to navigate to different posts. I didn’t see any Previous or Next links so the next thing I immediately thought of was that the pointing fingers (see below) must actually be the links — except they’re just pointing in the wrong direction. Ha. I was wrong. They have no functionality, they’re simply just part of the header. Here’s what’s interesting. According to one of Gestalt’s theories on proximity, things that are near each other appear grouped — I actually didn’t think the pointing fingers were grouped with the header because the spacing between them was just a bit too far and my eyes were already automatically drawn to the header itself BECAUSE OF IT’S BOLD CAPPED FONT.

2) Since there are no Previous and Next buttons at the end of every post, I am not forced to scroll up all the way to the top of the page and search for the next week that I want to read.  While identifying which week (see first image) I want to click on is not a difficult task for me, I could imagine it being difficult for those who can’t see well.

3) Why bury the search function way at the bottom of the footer? Why not make it visible above the fold so that it could be easier for people to search? By the time I am at the end of a post, I’m already scrolling to the top to click on the next week. I skip the footer because according to site hierarchy, things that aren’t important are placed at the end of a page so I automatically assumed there was nothing useful in the footer for me.

After getting over the minor friction on this site, I’ve come to love the site for its rich content. I think it’s wonderful when people take their personal time to share their knowledge with others because it’s so powerful!

As I get more and more into ui/ux, I will be posting my critiques on interfaces that I think could be better improved. Please check back again soon for new posts!