Designing for Context
All products — digital or physical — grow out of people’s needs or problems. Identifying and internalizing that need or problem is essential for coming up with innovative solutions. To be able to identify a need or problem, it is crucial to first understand how people are doing certain tasks and what do their current experiences feel like. It’s also worth considering that the same people might do the exact same task differently in different settings. For example, John may experience no difficulty when topping up his pre-paid card at the comfort of his own home where he can dedicate his attention and time to the task he’s doing but this may be more stressful for him at the store just before checkout where there are people queued up behind him.
Motivation can change depending on context and a specific human motivation can be shared across multiple groups of users. A tech-savvy person might have same needs as a technologically challenged person in certain situations. A visually impaired person’s problem might be true for a non-impaired person in some settings. Conditions of light (or dark), user’s physical and cognitive load, environmental noise, and other situational factors as well as acquired behavior can strongly influence how people use a product, thus affecting the usability of that product.
This is particularly important for usability testing. Ideally, a product should be tested in the setting that is intended to be used in real-life. However, this may not always be possible. Most of the time, the products are tested in a lab environment. Even if it is a purely digital experience that is being tested, it is crucial to evaluate the product depending on proposed use case when interpreting the results. For example, if the booking flow of a ride booking app is being tested, it’s important to keep in mind that people might be in a hurry or standing up holding an umbrella with one hand while trying to book a ride to go back home. In this case, the importance of task completion time, error rate and ability to quickly navigate through the flow become more prominent.
It becomes more tricky when designing and testing experiences that include physical components. In order to successfully evaluate such experiences, user’s journey must be considered as a whole. A journey can start in digital and end in physical domain. Withdrawing cash with a QR is a good example for this. When designing and testing this feature, environmental conditions play an important role in usability. For example, screen glare of cash machine in a sunny day can render this feature completely useless if not taken into consideration. Similarly, grumbling people behind the person trying to withdraw cash may demotivate user to use this feature if the experience is not quick and seamless enough.
Acquired behavior can also make or break a product if not thought thoroughly. If people are used to doing a certain task in physical realm, more care is needed when transferring that task into digital realm. Take self baggage drops at airports for example. People have been dropping off their baggages with the help of a staff member since the beginning of air travel. In the recent years, airlines introduced the ability to purchase extra baggage allowance through their mobile apps and allowed passengers to drop their luggage off at the conveyor belt themselves. Although, the process of purchasing extra baggage allowance through mobile apps was straight forward, passengers did not seem to understand that they needed to drop their baggages themselves. This resulted in queues in front of express baggage drop points. When transforming physical tasks into digital experiences, such complications are well expected due to the process of adaptation. Informing users about what has to be done in each step of the experience can ease out this friction. If users are not informed properly, they naturally act according to their acquired behavior. This information can be conveyed via digital platforms as well as with the help of a support staff or printed materials within the borders of physical realm.
Designing for context requires utmost understanding of shifting motivations of users in different situations. Environmental factors, user’s physical and mental state, and acquired behavior have direct effect on the usability of a product. Whether the product at hand is purely digital, solely physical or a combination of both, focusing on the whole journey a user goes through is the key for designing meaningful experiences.
