Pre-mobile and pre-Google Plus, Google had a handle on the creation and sharing of photo albums. Picasa took some time to learn, but once you got the hang of it, photos synced correctly from the desktop to the web, and you knew with whom you were sharing—key features of any social site/app/service, and usually difficult to get right. Everything seemed to work. So, with my photos I stuck with Picasa, and dismissed Facebook and whatever Apple was doing, which seemed to lag behind its competitors in features. I also use Gmail so I figured that t...

You’re coming to a business meeting in New Jersey. You don’t ride NJ Transit every day, if ever. You arrive at the station house and see this screen: The red bars means trains are delayed, and green means they’re on time, right? Wrong, but it’s probably going to take you a while to realize it as you sort through the confusing information design, while urgently trying to figure out what track you’re supposed to be on. Hope you make your train! As you start to realize that you’re wrong, you notice the light gr...

Truly brilliant. So much fun. Homeplus, Tesco’s chain of grocery stores in South Korea, wallpapers a subway station with actual images from its store shelves. While consumers wait for their train to arrive, they can shop by capture the QR code for each item and adding it to a mobile shopping cart. Orders are placed on the spot, and are delivered after they arrive home. Consumers are the big winners here: After a long day, they get to look at a beautiful, expansive, mood-lifting wall of color instead of a grey wall. They re-capture other...

My excitement over the recently released version (2.2) of Epicurious for iPhone evaporated when I discovered three things: A fee to sync recipes on the iPhone with those saved in the inadequate recipe box on the website (I had presumed this would be free); An advertisement with a close button that sends people into the App Store, repeatedly; The failure to correct major navigational shortcomings in the app. Let’s take a closer look at why Epicurious mobile has been sent to UX Rehab. 1. A $1.99 for syncing your recipe box I know: itR...