Red Route in Application Design

“ Goal is to allow high traffic volumes to flow freely without obstruction “

“Why red is not permitted to stop here…?”

Red Routes are majorly derived from “Important roads in London”.

Transport for London do everything in their power to make sure passenger journeys on these routes are completed as smoothly and quickly as possible

Dr. David Travis of User focus identified that the analogy of the red route. By identifying the core paths users will take on a website should be identified as the red routes.

London’s Red Routes as a metaphor for frictionless user journeys.

How does Red route help in Designs ?

“When applied to design, these red routes are the critical and frequent paths that users take to complete their tasks”

Red Route principle

Define red routes for your product and you’ll be able to identify, prioritise and eliminate any usability obstacles on key user journeys.

Identifying Red Routes

• Critical
• End-to-end tasks with multiple steps or actions
• Frequently utilised
• Built for scale
• Key value drivers
• Objectively successful
• Tied to critical product metrics

Red route usability

“Focusing on your product’s red routes provides the key constraint you need to ship a high value product from version 1”

Red routes improve speed and effectiveness:

we can ruthlessly eradicate any usability obstacles on the key user journeys.

Red routes describe frequent and critical activities :

we need to map out the red routes for our site it’s important to consider both the frequency and critical nature of the activity

Red routes should reflect key business objectives :

These red routes are clearly important from the perspective of the organisation: you need to make sure these routes are trouble-free to make money

Red routes should reflect key customer objectives :

Visitors to your site will have their own goals that your site needs to support. there will be others that may not seem that important to your organisation but that are critical if customers are going to do business with you

Red route Analysis

“ Red routes are the key tasks that users want to carry out with the product “

You can decide if one of the product backlog items lies on a red route by asking two simple questions :

1. How many users need this function?
2. How often do users need this function?

“Your customer should be able to navigate their way around directly to the product they desire in the least amount of time possible”

By identifying what the top tasks of your users are it allows you to:

• Anticipate user needs
• Guide usability testing
• Target essential website pages
• Design website with user needs in mind
• Identify your website’s mission

Benefits of Identifying Red Routes :

“Defining crisp red routes for your users is like allowing them to travel from Point A to Point B without any obstacles”

• Identifying red routes helps your team prioritise user needs and facilitate alignment amongst your stakeholders.
• It also helps avoid scope creep and the introduction of extraneous/ancillary features.
• Most importantly, it helps your team build and optimise product features that deliver the most value to your customers and drive your key metrics.

Real time examples Red route type

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