How Important is the User Experience?
Today I want to talk about User Experience (UX). I want to address the issue where many web developers do not take user experience when designing their website. First, do not be confused with the term "user interface" that is a subset of the whole user experience. UI is a component of user experience and it is important element, but there are many aspects that are related to user experience that you should consider also. You should better understand the Consequences of ignoring that important facet of Web Design. For some companies this is the difference between success and failure.Wikipedia explains it very well: "As user experience is a subjective feeling, it cannot actually be "designed". Instead, you can design for a user experience...". So investigating the specific market that you website or web application is targeting is a crucial step for deciding feature requirements and mapping the user interaction with the interface, in order to achieve specific goals. In order to do so, every web designer or project manager, need to follow specific guidelines. You need to learn how ti incorporate your business and marketing goals, together with the ability to please user experience.
In order to get a better understanding on what user experience (UX) is all about, I searched the Internet for information, something simple that will help me understand the term. I went into a presentation site, and watched a presentation made by Nick Finck. The presentation is called "The Ten Commandments Of User Experience". I know that many of you don't want to read long articles, and that's the reason why I recommend watching this presentation. It concentrated on several aspects of User Experience, that every website should become: Useful, usable, desirable, valuable, findable, accessible and credible.
You need to understand that you are not the user. If you design an ecommerce site for example, you need to understand the target audience that you build you site for. The chart in that presentation explains it very well: How you see it: Data -> logic ->user interface | How you should see it: User Interface -> logic -> data. There many what called "Bosses", that do not see understand the importance of user experience. They love their products and believe that it will succeed because they love it. Furthermore, they think because they know how to handle the program, anyone will learn it as quick as they did. There are many great ideas out there in the Internet, and many fail because of misunderstanding the importance of User Experience (UX) - Yes, it is all about the user, NOT You! (for more detailed information watch that presentation).
It is hard to really understand what the user want, because we are not that user. You need to start thinking out of the box and understand the effectiveness of website accessibility, user interface, graphic design, and everything relate to User Experience. You just can't build hopes by letting Tech guys or Code-Heads do all the work, because many of them just can't. There is a reason why there are professional user experience consultant, because they learn to think out side the box and they have the right tools to put all the pieces together, in order to deliver the appropriate product to the customer.
The customer does not want to understand how you do what you do, he or she just want to enjoy the outcome of your products - "What do I get from using your service/product?". Think about it for a second, You can even spend millions of dollars on many sophisticated technologies that work at the background, but if the website/software will be low in user experience quality, you just throw all that investment straight to the sewage.
There are many terms that people search in order to get more knowledgeable about the user experience subjects, here are some of them: Interaction design, human computer interaction, human factors engineering, usability, user interface design and so on. User experience is not related only to web experience, but also for any interaction of customers with products or services. The what called "User Experience Design", includes all the subset terms: Information architecture, Human computer interaction, user interface design, interaction design, usability and human factors engineering. For more detailed information about any one of them, visit Montparnas article "What is User Experience Design".
Now you should ask yourself the most meaningful question: "What
affects user experience?". When I first start investigating the
subject, I have read several basic construction blocks that help us
measure the User Experience:
- Utility
- Usability
- Aesthetics
- Identification
- Stimulation
- Value
Of course those constructs are different from one person to another, So
there are different evaluation methods that help us get the right
information, before practically addressing any one of them. You can use
interviews and questionnaires for example, in order to get a better
insight of your customers' needs. There are many mistakes being made
because software vendors (when we talk about software product design
for example, but it is true for other products to), make decisions based
on what they think it will be best to include in their product, rather
then then targeting the needs and expectation of their customers. There
are companies that offer software product design services, like Altoros
for example.
If you are searching professional information, advices and service related to usability, I recommend visiting UPA site (The Usability Professionals' Association).
Peter Morville explains about User Experience Design in his column. He an architecture designs that he called "The User Experience Honeycomb". It illustrates the distinction between user experience and user-centered design. From 3 circle, he jumped to seven hexagons illustration. He presented the well known user experience honeycomb that he developed with his friends and it is also shown in the presentation the we linked to earlier in this article. This information architecture is being used world wide to improve User Experience by addressing all the seven aspects: Useful, usable, desirable, valuable, findable, accessible and credible (read the full article here).
You can see the importance of high quality User Experience Design. In order to present the best user experience to you website visitors, you need to concentrate on their needs and investigate every building block in the User Experience Design architecture, to fully deploy the most appropriate website development and Internet marketing strategies. Understand content requirement, information architecture, interaction design, Interface, website navigation and visual design. You need to remove your personal preferences (I know, it is really hard to do sometimes). You can employ employees, which have different backgrounds that will share their understanding and give more non-subjective as a group.
Of course using A/B multivariate testing on your web design building blocks, will give you better indication about the quality and effectiveness of your User Experience Design strategies. There are websites who invested hundred thousands of dollars in order to improve user experience. Of course it all depend on your project's budget, but you should NOT under estimate the importance of User Web Experience, it is too important to ignore. So when you compare the importance of user experience to other website design factors (coding, QA, etc.), just remember to give it more attention than you otherwise thought you shouldn't.