“Business success is always defined by the quality of the overall customer experience.”
— Forrester Research, 2001
The best consumer experiences are designed to empathize with consumers, allowing them to complete tasks efficiently and get them out of the way – whether they involve interacting with physical objects or digital interfaces such as a website or mobile application.
Experiences that put user needs first are useful, usable and desirable. They not only solve problems but make it easy in the process. By using research to impart the right affordances, they increase consumer propensity to engage, respond and recommend. Ultimately, this leads to solving business needs while addressing their own in the process. User-first experiences are designed to turn casual users into valuable advocates.
But how do you develop these types of experiences while balancing business objectives? In practice it’s not really that difficult but requires a clear vision and a more nuanced approach in communicating value to pull it off completely.
What constitutes a great experience?
The first step to understanding how to develop great user-first experiences is to answer the question of “what constitutes a great experience?” Although the specifics can be quite subjective, they’re most often qualified by three main characteristics:
- Usefulness
- Usability
- Desirability
Although there are no universal rules that fit every case, the overarching principle is that great experiences deliver on user needs by striking a balance between how something works and how it looks. From there, the key is to constantly iterate around those themes.
“Websites that are hard to use frustrate customers, forfeit revenue and erode brands.”
— Forrester Research, 1998
Great user-first experiences require time, careful consideration and prioritize tasks over features in their execution. They recognize that getting the basics right, doing the right thing by default, and not attempting to be everything to everyone is critical. User-first experiences often do less, but what they do, they do better. Everything else strengthens the base while increasing value and desirability.
Like all truly great design, a hallmark of user-first experiences is that they’re better for things deliberately removed than for those added. Just ask Dieter Rams or Steve Jobs.
Opinionated to the Core
I’d be willing to bet nearly everyone can name at least one or two companies whose products or services fall into the realm of user-first experiences. For example, Dyson, Zappos, Amazon, Google and of course, Apple to name just a few. Their products and services surprise and delight consumers around the world and are more than just “lipstick on a pig” solutions.
In many cases, products from these companies themselves are not wholly new or revolutionary — vacuum cleaner, online shoe and book retailers, web-based applications and computer software/hardware. Rather it’s the unique, almost singular point of view, voice and user-focused approach they apply that make them great.
These companies take every opportunity to reinforce the three key characteristics of a great user-first experience throughout a customer’s lifecycle, whether online or offline. To that point, another example of a company that understands great user experiences is Disney.
The Disney experience is one where every minute experience is connected — their movies, theme parks, merchandise and shopping experiences are designed to create a world that you can’t help but be engaged with. They vigorously carry the company’s vision through every interaction. People of all ages love them for it, just as people do for companies such as Apple.
Practical Tips
Ok, so how about some practical suggestions? As I mentioned, getting the basics right is the best place to start — so here are a few high level and tactical starting points to consider.
- Know and understand your audience(s) needs and motivations to find an optimal balance that addresses their pain points while still being able to achieve often competing business objectives.
- Test and iterate on concepts with real users using simple low-cost paper or wireframe prototypes.
- Figure out how something should work and look like before building anything.
- Use research to facilitate design decisions around navigation and information architecture, layout, typography, accessibility controls, etc.
- Follow common interface and interaction paradigms to help lower learning curves.
- Set expectations by using direct and appropriate language to explain how something works.
- Ease users into an experience by making tasks as simple as possible.
- Make completing forms painless by requesting only information that is absolutely necessary for a task.
- Break complex interactions into multiple steps and guide users through the entire process.
- Eliminate anything unnecessary and utilize progressive disclosure to provide a focused experience.
- Avoid alienating customers by utilizing progressive enhancement to ensure that content is accessible to everyone first.
Where Next?
Great user experiences take time, involve clear objective prioritization, and require businesses to empathize with customers, thereby putting their needs first. By starting from a strong foundation, businesses save time and money, which in turn reduces the risk of large-scale redesigns later. An offshoot benefit of great experiences is that they’re designed to help develop strong communities of engaged customers that will advocate on the business’ behalf. And who doesn’t want that?
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