Aaron Weyenberg eloquently explains:

I don’t call myself a UX Designer for one simple reason: I don’t believe experiences can be designed. At least not outside the realm of science fiction or without knowledge about ourselves that we have yet to discover. I view User Experience as a field of study with a range of disciplines within it, not something we author (particularly not by a single designer). Products are designed. Experiences are their resultants.

I wholeheartedly agree. User experience is affected by the product, the user and the context in which the interaction occurs; of the three, only products can be designed, while users and contexts can be predicted at best.

This alone worths ten billion dribbble shots. Now if only someone builds a dedicated web app for that…

Peter Steen Høgenhaug on the results of his icon usability tests:

All in all, only 35.29 % of the test participants understood the chain icon, and only 25 % understood the globe icon. While we didn’t set a minimum for success, clearly, 25 % is not good when it comes to usability.

While these tests provide some good insight, they completely miss the point that icons were never meant to replace text labels to start with.

Thanks to HackerNews for the reminder.

Lukas Mathis on the beginner-expert dichotomy:

The two goals — simplicity and depth — are at odds. Adding depth also adds complexity. So, what should you do? Go for depth, or go for simplicity?

To my knowledge, there is no conflict between simplicity and depth. There is only bad design. Regardless of the target audience and its level of expertise, feature depth should never be an excuse to design complex user interfaces. Jef Raskin explains in The Humane Interface (2000):

These sets of requirements are not in conflict; therefore, a well-designed and humane interface does not have to be split into beginner and expert subsystems. This is not to say that an interface must not be split on these lines. However, if you find yourself designing an interface and are tempted to provide "expert" shortcuts, consider whether you should instead redesign the existing method so that it satisfies the needs of all users with one mechanism.

While an ideal iMovie and Final Cut Pro merger is unlikely at the moment, Apple seems to be moving towards this direction more than ever before, despite the backlash.