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I’ve just come back from a fantastic 3 days in Newcastle where I was attending the DIBI (Design It, Build It) conference. There were many fantastic speakers but one of them covered a concept that really got me thinking.
Blasting Expectations Out of The Water
Admittedly I’m a bit biased when it comes to evaluating @Adii’s talk at DIBI. I’ve known him for a few years and I’m a big fan of his work, so he could have talked about pretty much anything and been greeted with my approval. That being said, I did not expect for him to prove to be the most thought-provoking speaker of the day, which is exactly what he turned out to be.
If You Don’t Design it, You’re Doing it Wrong.
The premise of Adii’s talk was simple: you need to design everything, and involve design in your business from the very start. For some designers in the room this didn’t resonate, I saw a couple of tweets about “preaching to the converted”, but as Adii himself explained at the very start: he was coming from a business angle.
Adii discussed how his company, @WooThemes, don’t just design interfaces; they try to design every bit of interaction that a customer will have with them, including customer service. If a customer has a complaint about a product then the way in which that customer is handled is designed for a specific outcome: a happy customer.
Up until now I’ve always understood UI (User Interface) design and usability, but I’ve never full appreciated UX (User Experience) design to be something totally separate to both of those things. To be honest I don’t think it’s my fault, most UX blogs cover usability and accessibility, not user experience.
A Few Examples
Just to make this a little less conceptual, let me give you a couple of examples:
- User Interface Design – A button
- Usability Design – A button which stands out from its surroundings and is easily click-able
- User Experience Design – A button which has your name on it
Function, action, emotion. What Adii was getting at was designing the last part in particular, designing user experience and creating an emotional reaction. Seeing a button with your name on it is familiar, it’s easy, it’s recognisable. Be honest, how often have you considered the emotion that your user (or customer) will experience? Here’s how it applies to WooThemes customer service:
- User Interface Design – A contact form for a user to submit a complaint
- Usability Design – A contact form with only 3 fields that’s clearly labelled
- User Experience Design – Having someone respond to the message within 10 minutes with a full refund
Function (it works), Action (it works well), Emotion (it just made me really fucking happy). Here’s one last example that shows how this can apply in the offline world:
- Product Design – The original iMac
- Usability Design – Everything is built in, no confusing cables
- User Experience Design – When you open the box, the first thing you see is a handle – to help you lift it out.
That’s right, Apple actually changed the design of their entire product just for the sake of the user experience when you open the box and need to lift it out.
Stop Thinking About Interfaces, Start Designing Experiences
I wasn’t getting this point all the way up to the end of the talk, when I asked during the Q&A: “What’s your opinion on products such as BaseCamp and HighRise by 37Signals, who don’t design anything – they just build it and then throw on an interface that works.”
Adii’s response was instant: (quoting from memory) “The user interface may not have had design at its heart, but the user experience was designed at every single stage – this is what made those products so successful.”
It’s taken me a full 48 hours to fully appreciate the idea behind what Adii was talking about: the idea of designing user experience.
Conclusion
All of the talks on the Design track of DIBI were excellent (and I’ll be discussing them on the next episode of @ExplicitWeb), but for me Adii’s was the one that really got me thinking, not about graphics, not about CSS, not about fucking internet explorer. It got my mind working with regards to designing the layer beyond all of that stuff.
Food for thought.
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Good stuff man, and well said.
In our field it is so easy to get caught up in how something looks and how something works, and overlook the whole experience and what reaction/emotion this can provoke. It’s even harder when you are working in a team of designers, along side a team of developers, along side a team of ‘business people’ etc… everyone focuses on their own smaller sub section of a project, gets really caught up in it and no one looks at the whole thing or no one looks at the whole thing until it’s right near the end of the project.
It’s definitely something to be thinking about all the way through a project.
Excellent post John. I enjoyed the analogies that clearly stated the point. I am currently working with a client that is so focused on usability that it’s been very challenging. She wants to break “rules” and when she explains why she wants a feature a certain way… she ends up making so much sense. She is making me think outside the box.
Also a wonderful way to see if your website is user friendly is to watch someone look at your site for the first time. Stand behind them. They will lead you through the site missing things you feel are important and seeing things that should not be focused on. Fascinating.
I love it when you come across something which totally pulls you out of your way of thinking and says “hey, what about this” and all of a sudden you have a totally new perspective on the whole thing that makes a load of sense. I also love that people like Adii exist to point us in the right direction every so often.
Also enjoyed the simple analogies you used in the post and clearing up the difference between UI and UX, which I suppose can be classed as user experience design. Nice.
You would love reading “The Designful Company”: http://www.amazon.com/Designful-Company-culture-nonstop-innovation/dp/0321580060.
While you’re at it, go ahead and pick up all 3 of Neumeier’s books in the whiteboard series. I keep them handy on my bookshelf for reference.
I think that designing user experience is not something you can do on your own. You always need to develop a beta version of the product/website and then release it to a closed group of users, and get their feedback.
As designers we must remember that most of the time we’re not the users of the things we design, and as a result even though we always try to get the UX design done the right way, it’s not that easy without a small group of targeted beta testers.
I’m sure you would agree that Apple are masters of user experience design, but when was the last time that they released a beta product to a closed group of users? ;)
Beta testing has its place, mostly for usability rather than user experience, but the principles of human emotion (unlike human interaction) are fairly consistent.
Just because we don’t hear much from Apple when it comes to beta testing, doesn’t mean they don’t do it. But nevertheless, point well taken ;)
Great article John, and I also loved the examples you gave in an attempt to clear up the confusion between UI/Usability,UX. Oh, and on the Apple beta testing thing. 3 words: iPhone, Bar, Gizmodo ;)
LMAO! Good call :)
Nice article but I think what makes it even nicer is seeing that Red Metal Box logo over to the right.
I think there’s some great ideas and thoughts expressed here, by both you and Adii. For me I’m sort of realizing more and more the importance of designing every little aspect of any part of a site/product that a user might interact with. And that’s fine working on a project that I’m building.
The problem comes, in my opinion, when you talk about this in terms of client work. You don’t always get asked to work on every tiny detail, sometimes you might not even know of these interactions, especially if you’re only working on the design. It’s only once they’ve been developed and launched do you see all of the wholes and gaps in the user experience. And by this point clients aren’t always so keen on taking a designer back on to work on fixing and improving all of these tiny user interactions.
You can spot a project that has had constant designer input / feedback & improvement – they’re always the ones that people love to visit. I definitely think that business minded people running a blog / website / app or anything need to think about having a designer “oversee” every aspect of the design, not just during the initial build, but throughout the entire project. That can mean involving them with every decision or feature, or just getting their feedback every so often on updates and improvements.
Thanks for detailed comment Liam – you make some excellent points :)
The point both Adii and yourself raise is one often overlooked in all walks of life. I’ve lost count of the times when I come to use something, be it a physical or digital product, and either find it incredibly laborious to use, or simply don’t relate with it and move on to something better suited.
Too many designers, developers, and manufacturers are putting all their focus on features and pretty details while losing focus of the experience that comes with using their product. I’ll use the overly-tired Apple vs. PC argument as an example. PCs, and Windows in particular, are systems built for functionality and need to support a whole variety of different hardware. Apple, on the other hand, have full control of the hardware and software and it shows. Windows does lots of great things but it’s lacks a great experience, it’s not a joy to use. Apple or OSX, on the other hand, does nothing particularly special yet it feels intuitive and fun to use. Apple have built in a good experience from the hardware inputs right up to the GUI on your screen, because they have the power to do so. And it shows… there is a cult following behind the brand because people enjoy using their products.
I’m becoming more fascinated with UX design as days go by, and it’s something I hope to really think about in future projects. After all, what use is something if no one enjoys using it?
I’m not sure that this presents experience design in as positive a light as you may have intended. The examples you provide are, in fact, contrary to the value that experience designers aim to provide:
A “button with your name on it” leaves the user without an indication of what it does (and users will dismiss it as an advertising gimmick); a company that simply sends you a refund when you make a complaint isn’t solving the customer’s real problem (they are asking for help, and your check will seem like a dismissal); and while the handle on the iMac made it easy to unbox (once), its design and location on the product became a dust basin for all the years people owned that machine (which is a rotten trade-off taht focuses on a short-term win and a long-lasting loss for the user).
What’s more, I think you are underestimating the value that design and usability bring to the task. A designer doesn’t merely stick a button where it looks pretty, and a usability expert doesn’t tick it off as a success if it’s easy to click – both of them do their work with careful consideration of what the user is attempting to accomplish.
What I’m getting at here is that user experience is not a separate discipline from design and usability, but a principle that is the driver behind both of these disciplines: design and usability are good because they contribute their expertise to the creation of a positive user experience – in the context of a task, which is undertaken to satisfy a need.
Or at least, that’s the way it ought to be, but often isn’t – and the role of the UX “designer” is often more of an ambassador and evangelist to focus the people who attend to those tasks on the importance of the ultimate user and defend their decisions against competing interests that are more short-sighted (imperatives that palce emphasis on the approach taht is cheapest to develop, least disruptive of “business as usual”, and will have a big short-term impact regardless of the long-term harm).
I must admit, I’m not familiar with Adii’s work – but from the way you represent him, I’m not presently inclined to look much further. Setting up these sorts of divisions among disciplines, and people, implies that designers and usability experts should not consider user experience as part of their role, and that what they do is less valuable than what a UX expert does. This is precisely the kind of sentiment that keeps us at odds with one another, rather than working collaboratively toward the same goal.
Hi Jim, I’m sorry you feel that way however I’m fairly certain that you’re just deliberately overlooking and discrediting the principles of what I outlined for the sake of it. Everyone else who I’ve spoken to (and indeed everyone else represented here in the comments section) understands what is being said. In fact Adii himself was really pleased with the article, so I don’t feel that I’ve mis-represented him in any way.
I have to say I find it a little strange that you’re so critical on issues of usability, design and user experience based on the site that you’re linking to from your name, but I guess one can’t please everyone ;)
Thanks for taking the time to leave your thoughts!
Really interesting points; thanks for linking to the video, watched it last night and really enjoyed it.
We’re about to convert a huge desktop app to web-based, so these kinds of resources are invaluable – plus I downloaded a copy of the moo’d cards! these will be fantastic for us, thanks for creating them.
Dan
Great post and I have to agree completely.
The most successful product is almost always the one that is the most fun to use.
Also a good comeback from @Adii on the 37Signals question. He’s absolutely right. They start with the user experience and end with the design part. You should check out their book rework. It also has some great insights in it.
Super nice article. Thank you for sharing your knowledge
Mohamed
Great article with excellent examples!