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About There4

I build simple, clean, and maintainable internet applications. People should never need an owners manual to use software, I believe that applications can be easy to use while still being powerful. Applications should remain valuable through their entire lifespans, and should be flexible enough to grow and change as requirements shift.

I prefer to develop with Blueprint CSS, jQuery, and Cake PHP. I have extensive development history with PHP, MySQL, Microsoft SQL, and mixed Win32/Linux hosting environments.

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Heft – Is there a corollary in UX?

Posted in: Blog, UX by Craig Davis on November 23, 2009

There has been some really good discussion lately about the ways that we as consumers judge a product. I do believe that quality is fractal. The quality of a product can be felt almost immediately – we can all tell the difference in leather and vinyl, if not immediately by sight, certainly by touch. What elements in an user interface are like this? What can we change in a UX that gives an application a better feel?

I believe that one of the things that affects the way that we feel about a product is it’s heft – the apparent density of a product. Some small electronics devices have extra weight added to them. We’ve all purchased something that looked great, but felt flimsy once it was in our hands. That added heft in this case is not entirely fake – without the added heft it wouldn’t sit on a table correctly, the cables running into it could hold it aloft or twist it around. But beyond that, it’s psychological.

So, with that in mind, what in UX is might be the corollary to heft?