The Seven Pillars of User Experience

Alex Sineath

As a UX designer or developer, you’re often asked to explain, “What is UX?” UX is difficult to boil down into just a few sentences, especially when your audience isn’t well versed or hasn’t thought about these ideas in the past.

Peter Morville, a designer and information architect famous for his simplified articulation of UX, uses seven keywords to describe the core tenets of UX: Useful, Desirable, Accessible, Credible, Findable, Usable, and Valuable.

These seven descriptors are especially valuable because they are all common words in everyday parlance. When people describe their favorite apps, they often use some or all of these exact terms. They are a great starting point for anyone seeking to learn and understand more about UX.

Let’s take a deep dive into how these seven tenets factor into UX design.

Useful

Applications need to serve a specific need or set of needs that the user wants to be accomplished. Marketing gurus often refer to this principle as part of the “Jobs to be Done” theory, wherein humans have “jobs” they need done in their daily lives and “hire” products or services to accomplish them. While this sounds straightforward enough, oftentimes applications are developed with the aims of the creator, not the user, in mind. It should be of prime concern to meet the user on their terms and help them accomplish what they themselves seek to do.

Desirable

The goal of desirability in UX design is not to just create something pretty and eye-pleasing. It means producing a solution that improves the quality of life for the user. In a world without your application, people will find a way to accomplish what they need done. There is always competition to your solution, and it may be one with which folks are pretty comfortable.

With any new solution, there are factors drawing potential users toward the new and factors keeping them in the old. Problems with the old solution and perceived new benefits of the new one can help enable the switch, but forces of habit (inertia) and worries about adapting to the new solution (anxiety) can keep users stuck in their old ways. The goal of UX specialists should be to create a solution that users will find more desirable than their old one.

Accessible

Accessibility has several meanings. It should go without saying that applications should be accessible to users with disabilities and varying skill levels. But applications should also be available to users where they need them, whether that be on their mobile devices, on their personal computers, or wherever else. Meetings a user’s needs involves being present within necessary contexts.

Credible

Building credibility goes beyond establishing a brand. If users encounter bugs that hinder usability, they will lose faith that the application can deliver what it promises. Consistently delivering what’s been promised helps the user build trust in the application.

Findable

When users “hire” your application to accomplish a job in their lives, they expect it to be done quickly and easily. Pertinent information and functions should be organized to meet the user on their terms as they seek to accomplish their tasks. Information should also be easily navigable and understandable.

Usable

Applications need to be designed to be utilized by a human being. You may think this should go without saying, but there are ways the human mind works that need to be reflected in any intuitive application. For example, organizing data according to progressive disclosure, from summaries to more detailed datasets, helps keep a user’s attention and reduce cognitive workload.

Another important principle to remember in terms of usability is the power of familiarity. From having had experience with a variety of applications, your users will inevitably have learned to expect familiar behaviors, colors, and positionings in different contexts. In general, it’s usually best for the user’s benefit to stick to conventional design patterns. If you feel the need to deviate from the norm, make sure it’s worth the extra effort it will require from your users.

Valuable

Value can best be understood in economic terms. Value is a measure of benefit. Consumers will generally only purchase a product or service if its value to them personally is greater than the market price.

Users will likewise only use your application if its value to them personally exceeds the time and energy they must invest to do so.

The word “Valuable” is often placed at the center of UX diagrams, implying that an application’s value rests on the shoulders of its other characteristics — usability, usefulness, findability, etc. Indeed, it would be difficult for an app to be valuable to anyone without these core aspects.

But a larger concept of value is very important to consider when designing and developing an application. Keeping in mind how people “hire” products and services to accomplish jobs, if an application doesn’t satisfy any of a person’s wants or needs, why would they hire it? An application can be beautiful and intuitive, but if it doesn’t serve a definable purpose in people’s lives, it will not gain traction. So we as UX designers and developers must direct our focus beyond the aesthetic and always strive to create solutions that make real, valuable impacts in the lives of our users.

References:

https://semanticstudios.com/user_experience_design/

https://medium.com/@danewesolko/peter-morvilles-user-experience-honeycomb-904c383b6886