Prioritizing speed in UX design
“Done” is a beautiful word.
It means you’ve achieved something, no matter how miniscule, a victory in a world filled with defeats. It is a tiny leap of joy in your heart, not only a step towards something wonderful but actually something wonderful itself.
- zenhabits.net
These tiny leaps of joy combined amounts to a great user experience in a product.
Prioritizing speed is one of the UX fundamentals I hold on to dearly. It gets users to complete a task as quickly and intuitively as possible and gives them that tiny leap of joy in their heart.
One of the best way to do this is by making the most important actions the easiest to accomplish and present them in a logical and consistent manner using existing conventions.
I use the fantasy football app a lot, and I have picked one example I would like to share that adds unecessary steps to task completion (unecessary steps before the user gets that tiny leap of joy in their heart).
Lets look at this example. Replacing a player with another in his team in the app.
User task : Replace a player (Forster with de Gea).
- Pitch view — click on the player to be replaced: Opens pop-up
- Click on “Remove Player” : opens pitch view with player removed
- Click on the player again (grayed out): opens pop-up
- Click on “Select replacement” : Opens player list
- Select new player : Task complete :-)
In the flow, the third step is not necessary, and can be removed by combining step 2 and 3 to make the flow look like as below making the user journey to task completion even shorter.
In action….
User task : Replace a player (Forster with de Gea).
- Pitch view — click on the player to be replaced: Opens pop-up
- Click on “Select replacement” : Opens player list
- Select new player : Task complete!
:-D
As you might have noticed above, short steps is better when it comes to getting to users to complete a task. The user journey should be easy, with less friction.
More than that, short steps are victories in UX design. Users quickly get to task completion and feel great about it. And that compels them to keep going, and keep using your product.
These tiny leaps of joy combined amounts to a great user experience in a product.
