Exploring interaction and interface with my 7 month old.

A few days ago I was playing with my baby girl with her new walker, and she was trying to work out how to use all the toys on the front. The orange character moves along the arch, the flowers on the right spin, the steering wheel clicks as it goes round, and the horn in the middle plays different sounds and jingles every time it’s pushed.

With my hand around her for support whilst she tried to cram as much of the orange face in her mouth as possible, she pushed my hand against the horn and it started to play some music. She stopped in her tracks and listened as she realised something new was happening. Of course she didn’t know it was my hand she was pushing into it, I guess she presumed it was the part she was interacting with that made the noise, as she tried squeezing and pushing the face more and more fervently.

Observing this new first time interaction, not just new in the form of going to a new website for the first time for example, but also in terms of a new mind beginning to find out that actions have consequences, was fascinating.

First impressions matter a lot, when designing something for people to use they count for a great deal. When a new user goes to a website they immediately start to learn how things are done with the interface. Yes there are industry standard things that make aspects similar across the web, form filling for example can be predominately similar across most sites, but when these standards start to incorporate things like branding, tone of voice, content and context, they can mean users have to start working things out for themselves.

Bad habits developed by a user during their crucial first few moments viewing a site can have consequences later on. Not using the website effectively means that people are confused, frustrated, don’t find the information they require, don’t purchase the product, or buy into the brand. Just as my baby girl thinking that interacting with the face on her walker was causing it to make noise, it took her time, exploration and problem solving to work out that it was actually the button on the steering wheel instead. Who knows what she thinks about how she was first interacting with the face and the sounds came out.

Just as she had to relearn how it worked based on the misinformation at the start of her experience, we wouldn’t want people using something we’ve designed to have to relearn how to navigate part of a site or app later on in their user journey because of a bad first impression. It goes without saying this time could be better spent using it successfully from the outset.

And that’s if people decide to stay with website to learn these new habits, people may look for alternatives or just think the brand is confusing or useless. At the end of the day, most websites are not as exciting or interesting to our adult brains as a new walker is to a baby!

This short observation of her reinforced to me the importance of consistency in design. Based on misleading interaction, differing loading times which cause items on the page to appear later than others, or smaller things like inconsistent button styles for example, an experience can stutter at the start instead of going smoothly and can cause the user to struggle to navigate the site afterwards.

There’s an excellent piece on consistent design on the InVision blog by Joe Toscano – blog.invisionapp.com/consistent-design/ – a great explanation of how “great design is invisible because it’s consistent and familiar”, but never needs to be boring.

This little snippet of life reinforced these principles to me, sometimes it’s good to see these principals in practice in other aspects of life, not just in our offices, to help remind us of the value of them.

Next stop, watching old people use the internet for the first time.