“The UX Myth” you must know about
I am going to use a simple analogy to explain this.
User experience is like taste.
It can taste good or bad, spicy or sweet.
Our taste keeps changing, the today’s good might be tomorrow’s normal. Each of us prefers different tastes and flavours towards various kind of food.
There is no such thing as the perfect taste.
And, there is no such thing as the perfect user experience.
Designing user experience is like cooking tasty food.
The goal of cooking is to solve one’s hunger or craving. Hunger is a need, craving is a want. So, the food must be edible, tasty or not is optional.
The goal of designing is to solve one’s problem and provide a journey with good experience while using the solution. So, the problem must be solved, good experience is optional.
Designing good user experience and cooking tasty food are not expensive.
One can cook tasty food with just ingredients from the nearby grocery store. The key is the skills and techniques.
One can design a journey with good user experience with just little graphic design knowledge. The key is the thinking and understanding behind the journey.
Good look and feel don’t mean good user experience, nor tasty food.
One can make his/her dishes look extremely beautiful and colourful, yet it might lack of seasoning and taste bad.
One can come out with the pretty user interface, yet it doesn’t achieve any goal the solution is intended to or it adds extra steps to achieve one goal.
Good user experience comes with valuable content. Good food comes with healthy ingredients.
Food that is tasty but unhealthy will not be consumed daily. No one wants to eat McDonald everyday even it tastes really good once in a long time.
However, Subway proves it different that fast food can be made the tasty way with “healthier” and “fresher” ingredients.
The journey that provides good experience and valuable insights will make us want to come back for the second and third time.
If it just comes with pretty interface that doesn’t provide any value to the users, it is just eye candy. Users might never come back again.
The ultimate rule.
Make it fulfil. Make it tasty. Make it beautiful.
Make it work. Make it fast. Make it beautiful.
In reply to my friend’s post — “The UX Myth — 5 simple reasons why good UX isn’t THAT important for startups”:
3. You can’t afford good UX
Yes, anyone can. Good UX doesn’t cost money, nor long hours, it takes heart and brain.
There is always a cheaper way to design it, if one spends enough time to find that way, he could have make it.
Just like BusLeh, the first launch is already come an amazing UX.
