It’s amazingly easy to build products with your “point of view”. You have a certain idea of the product, and you build it accordingly. You have a certain perspective of design (who doesn’t!) and you create it in your own vision. If you are a good company, you’ll have a good product process in place as well.
But once you really start understanding how users, especially new users (or if your product is new, then any user for that matter) look at your product, how they approach it and what pieces they play with, there are new revelations.
Always.
That button shadow you and the team spent debating about for an hour, doesn’t matter.The brand colours that you want to stick to, don’t matter. The “it-needs-to-be-consistent-everywhere-otherwise-it’s-not-shippable” myth is shattered.The 'swoosh-animation` that your team spent days on, wasn't appreciated as much as you expected it to be.
There’s really only one thing users are interested in — clarity.
In real life, when you want a job done and you are forced to find a solution for it , all you want to do is find something that will solve your problem. Once you do, you really want to know how to use it quickly or learn it fast so that you get your problem solved. Your focus is not so much on the tool that you use to solve it, but how fast you can get the problem solved.
I want my clothes ironed, I just want to quickly learn how to use the new iron.I want to get my wifi up, I just want to set the new router up quickly.
The same thing applies everywhere, even in software. Users have just one question when they try your product out.
How does this work?
Users’ delight is inversely proportional to the time it takes for them to go from “What’s this” to “Got it” in your product.
Whenever you get stuck in design decisions about which way to tilt towards, it’s almost always good to go in favour of clarity in communication over aesthetics. It’s incrementally better to have a user who understands 100% of your product features and is unhappy with the colours you use, as against users who love your visual approach but have no clue about what your product does or how to use.
Err on the side of over-communicating with verbose copy rather than limiting what you want to say just because “It’s not looking nice and consistent”.
Who cares if it’s not consistent if you are going to lose a paying customer over it. Get your customers all the answers they are looking for, and also the ones that they aren’t as early as you can.
