Best Apps, Sites for UX Inspiration
In our upcoming April issue of Website Magazine, we interviewed a panel of UX experts who shared their thoughts on the popular topic. Here we provide bonus material - asking them:
"Are there any websites and/or apps that you are impressed with when it comes to pushing UX boundaries?"
"Websites and apps that push UX boundaries are the ones that are disrupting their industries: Airbnb, Uber, and those experiences that are truly shaped around understanding and solving a problem without being constrained by traditional or outdated processes."+ Janelle Estes, Senior Director of Enterprise Research Strategy at UserTesting
"I have long referenced the Volkswagen website, VW.com, as a leader in simple, clear navigation, and find it to provide engaging, interactive content experiences. Netflix is also impressive for the seamlessness of its browsing and watching experience-users don't feel at all like they are experiencing a typical page-based website."
+ Andrea Wagner, Head of Design at BigCommerce 
What advice can you provide businesses when it comes to prioritizing their UX initiatives?
"Users first, period. Wear your anthropologist hat. Watch them in action, interview them, experience what they experience. Once you build empathy with these exercises, you'll be able to see from their lenses, and prioritizing will be natural. Processes such as Design Thinking can help you get to disruptive innovation." + Demian Borba, Product Manager for Adobe XD
"The JotForm team are big fans of Full Story. Their product has a great UX, but more importantly they enable us to improve our UX across all departments. Designers gain insight into user behaviour, developers can easily debug errors, support staff can watch and get a better sense of what went wrong.
Other websites that inspire us include:
We love the bold storytelling and typography that leads you to read and understand.
They have one of the best editors. Any level of user can easily create something wonderful with it.
Great editorial intro and easy to use. They make creativeness look easy."
+ Aytekin Tank. CEO and Founder of JotForm, Inc "Design thinking can deliver tangible impact. Unsurprisingly, some of the best tech companies out there are improving their efforts. The likes of Dropbox, Slack and Intercom deliver quality product that are simple but extremely powerful."
+ Giovanni Luperti, Lead UX Engineer at Qubit
"While I don't think it's a good idea for startups to bend of the boundaries of user experience design, A company that has built a unique product for project management that has a user interface unlike anything I've ever seen that is simple, fresh and intuitive is Asana.com.
Their user experience makes complex tasks simple and intuitive, which is the 'Holy Grail' of excellent user experience design."
+ Bryan Clayton CEO of GreenPal
What are some of the main reasons why companies within your industry fail to meet people's expectations?
Clayton, GreenPal: "In our industry, serving the home maintenance needs of homeowners, a common tripping point for start ups in our space is the overemphasis of their technology.
We have seen this with colossal failures such as Home Joy a house cleaning start up that blew through $50 million of venture-capital before shutting down.
The company had a beautiful website and mobile app, however could not deliver reliable home cleaning in their customers' homes.
At the end of the day their customers and our customers don't care about technology they just care about a clean kitchen floor or perfectly manicured yard."
