Defining User Experience Pt.1
Posted by Aaron I | Filed under Design/Development, User Experience
In my effort to put together a useful series on defining what makes a good user experience, I ran a poll to hear from the people what they thought were the important ingredients that comprise a great user experience. Here are the results;
Defining User Experience Poll Results
These results are pretty much what I expected. Usability received the most results, and all of the above received the second highest amount of votes, you can see in the graph above that some of the other options received considerably less votes, and a couple of you even humored me and voted none of the above.
In this series we will look at the different aspects of user experience, and define the different elements, and discuss their importance to those who are interacting with what we are creating. We will start by looking at the results and seeing what they tell us. Considering that a lot of the voters were fellow designers/developers I expected that the highest result would be usability. At first glance this brings two things to my attention.
Most of those who voted know what is important in a good design.
Most of those who voted know what is important in a good design
Nope that is not a typo, let me explain…Most of those who voted (including myself) work in some type of design/development environment every day. For some of us this has provided a lot of experience in developing websites, and other user interfaces, which was shown in the number of votes that usability received in comparison to everything else ( it appears that most of us paid attention in design 101).
A good design starts with usability. So it is good to see we have our fundamentals of good design down. I do believe that usability is the top priority when creating a user based design/product… but we must be wary of setting usability out there on it’s own as if it were the Lone Ranger while the other valued components that make a good user experience are left to play sidekick (Tonto).At times we can get into the mode of knowing what we do a little to well, we think we know what the user needs to have a good experience, and more times than not we end up like the poor husband who gets his wife a bowling ball for Christmas, he thinks she will really enjoy the time together… bowling. Granted he had good intentions but he is a bit out of touch with what his wife may have really wanted (a trip to the day spa, pedicure, or simply something that shows he took interest in her needs.)
We must guard against growing numb to our users, simply because we “know what is important in a good design”, or “this is what we have always done”Usability is key… good navigation that is easy to follow and leads users to the desired results, making sure that the project/product message is conveyed with purpose and clarity, and other foundational elements must be in place for the initial design to succeed, but I personally think that unless we surround these elements with good visual appeal, strong help support, and a nice tug on the emotions (giving the use the warm fuzzies) the design will be unable to live up to it’s full potential, and may only accomplish the bare minimum.
Just like any sports team that has a superstar (i.e. a Kobe Bryant, or a Tom Brady) it definitely helps the teams chances of success to have that key player… but more times than not the team really can’t dominate, or reach high levels of success until it surrounds it’s players with a strong supporting cast of other quality supporting players. This leads us to understand why “All of the above” received the second highest amount of votes.( 41 second only to usability’s 44 votes).This really comes down to the idea of a well balanced approach to our design process, we really need to assess what the desired user response we are trying to achieve is, and then with the foundation of usability and supporting cast of visual appeal, emotional response, and a good support system we should be able to create beautiful websites/user experiences that lead the user to the desired response, helping our clients, and employers achieve a higher level of success.
Now that we have seen the results, and looked at the need for a balanced approach with all of our elements, we will look at each element individually. In the next article we will unpack the idea of usability, we all agree it is vital to the process, but what goes into making a site usable? where do we start?
I would love to hear what you think is key to developing a “user friendly” site (browser compatibility, standards, accessibility).
Chime in and let me know what you think. Thanks again for reading and giving feedback,
~ Aaron I
Tags: Blog, Graphic Design, User Experience, Web Design, Web Development
December 15th, 2008 at 11:26 am
It’s always important to define your audience. UX is not always something that can be measured once and then applied to everyone - it’s a personal experience for a niche audience more often than not.
For example, if you know your audience to use a common resolution, you should be sure to make the visual design fit into that constraint.
If you know that many of your users are colorblind (or have another disability that affects their online experience), measures should be taken to accommodate them and make your website more accessible.
Defining an audience before starting a web project is an essential task in my workflow. Following up with user feedback, and statistic software like Google Analytics is the next step to improving upon the overall user experience.
David Leggett’s last blog post..Usability Review: psdtolife.com
December 15th, 2008 at 11:47 am
@David,
Thanks for taking the time to read the article and comment.
“Defining an audience before starting a web project is an essential task in my workflow. Following up with user feedback, and statistic software like Google Analytics is the next step to improving upon the overall user experience.” - very true!
thanks again for visiting
Aaron I
December 27th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
[...] part 1 of the series, we discussed a balanced approach to our creating a good user experience. Initially I said… I [...]
January 5th, 2009 at 11:06 am
Hi Aaron!
Great article thanks! Nice blog! good work!
Could you just please link together all of your parts please? thanks
you rock!