about

UXtraordinary is written, designed, and maintained by Alex O’Neal (me!). I hope you enjoy these writings, and find some small portion useful.

development

UXtraordinary is a personal project, fitted in around a very busy work schedule and family life. It’s been through a couple of instantiations: a Drupal version, which was extremely slow, and a hand-coded, CSS- and JavaScript-driven version, which I loved visually, but which was tedious to maintain.

Finally I decided to customize a WordPress theme. Right now I’m in the process of adapting Lucid, by Elegant WordPress Themes, which I’ve chosen for its focus on content and responsive design.

personal guidelines

Since there is no one perfect design, there can be no perfect set of rules—only the best, most natural approach at a given moment. These are the guidelines I’ve developed for myself over the years.

• Taxonomy is context, and context is everything.
• Every audience is different. Even the same group of people will be a different audience for a different product or service. The behavior you desire will be different, and therefore audience triggers and responses will be different.
• Every audience is the same. Even two groups with no overlapping members share similar neurology. Information design can make use of these common perceptive and cognitive traits to optimize engagement and usability, both on an individual page and throughout the site.
• Form follows function. Do what you need to do as well as possible, and beauty will follow.
• Closely related is this: don’t be attached to the beauty of the moment. Taste and technology and audience needs change—and so must your site.
• Every solution is a blend of need and options. It’s not that the glass is half-full or half-empty, it’s that you have a glass and a certain amount of water. Now, what can you do with that?