The Cost of Bad Design
Bad design is everywhere, and it costs us severely.
For instance, have you ever pause for a long time when you just filled out a form on the web and you found that you can’t submit it? You got no idea what did you do wrong? That’s a bad design.
Imagine what you would do if you are presented with the “Error!” without knowing what causing the error? You as a user will surely ask for help, maybe through googling or ask the customer support.
This is what happen to us when reviewing the complaint tickets that coming in to our product. We am seeing a huge number of complains that user can’t login to their account. Their account status is active, they surely know the password since they just reset it. We can’t find the reasons why they can’t login to their account. Yet it costs our customer support huge amount of time trying to resolve these issues.
We then do a run through with our users to find out how they interact with the login form. Can you analyse why our users can’t login to their account from the screenshot above?
It turns out that they can’t login to their account because they didn’t click the “Submit” button. They clicked the “Activation” button instead. When we ask why they didn’t click it, they simply say “I think it’s not the button since the color is red”. Well, what an unexpected answer for us.
For your information, when they clicked the Activation button, there will be a pop up form that requires users to input their username and email to send an activation email in case they didn’t receive it earlier. Moreover, when you are trying to activate an account that already activated, you will got an error message saying “Your account is already activated”.
We assume that by making the login button color prominent will lead the user to click the button. We go it wrong. That’s just not what our users think.
However, the button color is not the actual problem. It is simply because we violated the Hick’s Law.
The time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices.
We presented the users with two buttons and the users now have options. When there is an options then the users will require some time to decide which one to click. After seeing that the “Submit” button is colored in red, they associating it with some dangerous action and therefore the decide to click the other button.
Another example of famous bad design is the ballot design. It costs the democracy big time! The voters are putting their vote to the wrong candidate and it sways the election result.
Assuming you want to vote Al Gore and Joe Lieberman which point will you pick? Most of the voters put it into the second point while the actual point for the candidate is the third! You know the rest of the story when you are found out that you are voting the wrong candidate and that candidate win the election.
Why in the world there’s such a bad design?
The simple answer is that we don’t understand our users well.
For the login form example, we didn’t do a proper product research when developing the product since it is a B2B product with a tight deadline, the most important thing is that it works. When you are developing a B2B product there is not incentive for developing a good UI since the customers will use it anyway if they want to get their work done.
For the ballot example, designing for the wide range of users in term of age makes the design even harder. Most of the voters that vote the wrong candidate is elderly. They can’t see clearly and need a big time to think when they are seeing the ballot for the first time.
Empathy First
To understand your users, it is essential to empathise with them. Always put your shoes into someone else’s shoes when you are designing. You are not designing for yourself, you design for your users. It is easier said than done but you have to try.
Now the question. How to empathise with our users? Well, simply by talking to them! Let your users know what you are building as soon as possible and always iterate. You don’t know what is wrong with your product until you ship it.
When you think that everything is perfect and in place, that’s when you got it wrong. You will be very surprised with what your users will find. No matter how experienced you are, you will always learn something new from talking to your users.
