Neil Wehrle

What do OXO Good Grips kitchenwares and the Apple iPad have in common? It may be hard to think of how chunky-handled potato-peelers and cutting-edge tablet computers may be related, but I think both are really “Trojan horses” of product design.
When I read the reviews, look at the UI, and play with it (admittedly, I [...]

A key usability heuristic termed the “Match between the system and real world“, says that software systems should mirror real-world scenarios, nomenclature, and procedures. In the real world, of course, things (especially social) tend to be messy, non-hierarchical, redundant, ambiguous, and often contradictory. A recent post from a designer observed that in his many years [...]

I’ve been an Amazon user for almost 14 years now, starting with books and moving on to just about everything else they sell. For the last couple of years I’ve downloaded MP3s (initially just to avoid Apple’s DRM, but now because I can find music much more easily). Every time, though I have had to [...]

Not to pile on, but recent personal experiences with the AA.com (American Airlines) site underscore just how dreadful the user experience on the site is, no matter what the excuses are. I’ve been using – with some success – the aa.com site for some time now, ever since I worked at Yahoo and AA was [...]

Douglas Bowman posted today on about his decision to leave Google, where he was a Lead Visual Designer. He sounds torn: on the one hand it is a fast-paced environment where you can define an entirely new practice with the ability to affect millions of users. On the other hand it is a strongly engineering-driven [...]

The Netherlands is releasing a fantastic new coin soon, continuing their tradition of stellar numismatic design. Not only is the execution brilliant, but the concepts supporting the design are deep, multifaceted, and engaging. Contrast this new coin with the EU-wide currency, and its clear that a smaller country (one with a strong design tradition) can [...]

I’ve been out of the educational space for a while, but I’m still fascinated by the possibilities for using technology to help advance student achievement. Most of the effort that I’ve seen has been well-intentioned but ultimately doomed to fail due to a few simple issues. Early efforts focused on hardware – wiring schools and [...]

I came across a map of the US Interstate Highway system that got me thinking.  I used to teach a class at FIT covering digital product development and UI design. One of the topics covered the representation and abstraction of the physical (real)-world. To make information usable, some level of abstraction is almost always necessary – especially [...]