Interaction Design

“Lots of people think simplicity is the opposite of confusion… It’s not. The opposite of confusion is clarity.”

- Jason Fried, What Clarity is All About

“…most value is realized not from breakthroughs but rather from thousands of tweaks and implementations that build on original work.”

- Jakob Nielsen, A/B Testing, Usability Engineering, Radical Innovation: What Pays Best?

A few months ago we designated Fridays for squashing known bugs and rooting out usability problems. The whole team sits together during lunch and performs common tasks in the app (such as setting up a new account and creating a list) to identify pain points and areas for improvement.

These Fridays have been enormously useful, and led directly to several updates that … Keep reading

A few months ago we made some fairly massive updates to Signal’s navigation. Today we’ve launched more updates that build upon that work. We think the changes make Signal that much easier to use.

Most noticeably, we rearranged the main navigation to support Signal’s evolution from a mobile-marketing, text-message based app to a cross-channel solution that emphasizes communication across digital channels.

Previous nav:

New nav:

Why this change? Lists are the heart of Signal, and the app is geared to help you communicate with and grow your lists by engaging more audiences. Promotions (formerly campaigns) still serve a purpose as standalone marketing campaigns. However, we feel they’re best used to reach new (and reward existing) customers or fans, and … Keep reading

Okay, you’re confused.  Let me explain.

After recently attending a Manchester United futbol match at Soldier Field I couldn’t help but ponder the incredible condition the athletes were in. From there, my mind started to wander on how I could apply the philosophies of their conditioning to my own life and career. What I’ve come up with is three principles to apply to your career or project, taken specifically from the world’s best futbol player, Cristiano Ronaldo‘s training regimen. This post is specifically aimed at building web applications since that’s what we do here at Signal.

Principle 1: Learn from the best outside your field.
Cristiano Ronaldo knew to get the best advice on improving his acceleration, he had … Keep reading

Web applications evolve as a result of research, testing and feedback. As part of our ongoing efforts to improve upon the digital marketing platform we’ve created at Signal, we’re conducting usability tests to help us identify areas of improvement inside the application. Our ultimate goal is to make your life (or, at least, your job) a little bit easier when using Signal.

What’s involved? During a usability test, we watch first-time users navigate the application and attempt to accomplish a set of tasks. The process is usually revealing, and produces a number of quick-fix and long-term items to address, which are then queued up in our existing product roadmap.

If you’ve never used our application and would like a peek … Keep reading