The Website of UX Designer Matthew Stephens

This is the first in a new series of blog posts where I review software related to the average UX professional.

For Mac users, there are countless options for coding environments. From full-featured WYSISYG editors such as Dreamweaver and RapidWeaver to the most basic text editors, the Mac platform can accomodate any coding style. My app of choice is TextMate. I was originally introduced to the program by a co-worker who had recently switched to Mac and found it to be his favorite. Another co-worker highly encouraged me to try BBEdit as well, since it supposedly had a much better community of developers working on plugins. As a long-term Dreamweaver user and even author of “Foundations of Dreamweaver”, I was highly critical and expected only the best. I spent a few days in each program and eventually narrowed it down to a few of my favorites. The final 3 were TextMate, BBEdit, and Jedit.

I chose TextMate in the end, due to it’s simplicity, usability, customizable interface, and bundle support. It made my life much easier in every way. I found that it had all the plugins that I needed and could customize things to improve upon Dreamweaver’s features, such as code completion, auto-formatting, etc. All the little hangups that I had become accustomed to with Dreamweaver were gone and all that was left was a pure, exciting coding experience.

My final rating of TextMate: 9.3 out of 10.

My final rating of BBEdit: 8.6 out of 10

My final rating of Jedit: 8.3 out of 10

Ratings were based on the following criteria: Usability, performance, flexibility, features, support, and community.

With all the talk about Facebook and privacy policies, it’s no surprise that someone would write an article about how it affects the user experience. The guys at Six Revisions have put together a really comprehensive look at why privacy is such a big concern, how it affects us, and why we seem to be okay with it. Identity is a very important issue and we seem to be at a turning point in our society, where our personal information seems value-less. Read this relatively short article in a few minutes and get involved in the discussion. Our future depends on it.

Privacy and the User Experience.

One of the most common interview questions for UX Designers is to name some interfaces that they like and then name some that they hate. I always mention Gmail as an interface that is both simple and easy-to-use, while Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail are struggling to keep up. I think this article finally provides the proof I needed to support my arguments.

Email UI Faceoff – GMail vs Hotmail vs Yahoo – The results.