A Framework I use to evaluate UI/UX designs
When you combine UI/UX you are actually merging User Interface with User Experience to create Interface-led Experience. In fact, UI and UX should never exist separately and UI is meaningless if it does not drive the right experience.
I have therefore created a framework to help ensure that Interface designs are experience led not design-led. Just like designs and improvements never end, this model also needs to continuously evolve, but this is nevertheless a good starting point for all of you to adopt to ensure designs meet business objectives.
Usability and Usefulness is a key parameter that must always be kept in mind while designing any user interface. Think about a universal electric plug socket and you will agree with me that it has great usability because you don’t need adapters for differnet devices. But where is it useful? Is it useful in a normal home or better for hotels, airports and other transit locations? Obviously, a universal plug socket will be costlier than a single plug socket and of little use inside a home but a great feature in hotels.
This is the reason why design should pass both usability and usefulness parameters. This reduces wastage and cost and also puts design in the context of the user's needs.
Purpose Driven design solves key issues faced by users or systems. A core question should be asked while designing “What is the purpose of this product or module or part?” Let’s analyze the design of Kindle. It’s a perfectly designed e-book reader, using magnetic ink technology, with an optimal screen resolution that is easy on the eyes, the software is brilliant at is allows u to bookmark, search word meanings and easily navigate using the flip gesture with your finger. It’s clearly a purpose-driven design but it fails at one aspect — the width of the device is too much for an average hand to hold, however anything less would compromise reading. So a decision to keep the current width was taken so that the core purpose of reading is met — which obviously was more important than optimizing the design for a better holding position. But even that could have been solved by adding a stickable glove accessory at the back of the kindle in which the reader could slip his hand and read comfortably.
Scrutiny Mountain helps you prioritize features of the design and keeps user interest, intent, and usage on top of the matrix. It is very similar to the What and Why — 4W(What, Where, When, Who)and 1H(How) design systems. The Seven Levels of Scrutiny for digital design:
- Does it work (at all)?
- Does it make sense?
- Does it work well?
- Is it intuitive?
- Is it visually appealing?
- Do the interactions feel natural?
- Does it create delight?
There is a wonderful article on medium that captures the Scrutiny Mountain concept which you should definitely read.
https://uxdesign.cc/when-designing-with-constraints-get-your-priorities-straight-32989ff94ba8
Robust Design is based on the principle that it will work 99.999% of the time. Have you ever thought of the corning glass gas kettle and its design? Is the glass itself unbreakable at high temperatures or does the design of the kettle helps it to bear the high temperatures too? In fact, the design has a great impact on the performance of the kettle — it's the spherical bottom that allows the micro expansion of the glass to occur on high heat and become almost unbreakable. This is a great example of a robust design where multiple features come into play to create features customers love.
Evidence-Based design broadly follows the principle of user test or lab test feedback. Think about the Crash-Test every car design has to go through before it is set into production. The design of the car has to take into account the minimum amount of injury and fatality to the passengers during a high-intensity accident. If you are familiar with prototyping in the car industry, you will know that multiple design models are crashed at high speed into concrete walls and the damage to the driver and passenger assessed, and internal design changed to minimize that. While you may see all cars as similar in outer design, it's the internal design that reduces fatality and injury in some of the top cars like BMW, Audi, Merc, etc.
Efficient design (backend and frontend) A good front-end design will fail if it does not communicate efficiently with the backend systems. A recent app release had a great interface that followed almost all design principles but still had issues as the backend API system had a design flaw. This created a huge amount of API calls in the system resulting in clogging of the network leading to multiple app crashes. This is a key example of a non-efficient backend design causing failure at customer interface.
Efficient design means it works efficiently for the end user application. On its own an efficient design is meaningless if it does not deliver the output the user is looking for. What will you rather have? A bad design that delivers or a good design that crashes !! I will choose the latter and so should you.
Overall Smoothness is when the entire system works in unison to deliver a brilliant experience to the user. I love to give the example of the Homepod setup or the Apple TV set up. It is just so brilliant. I am sure you will have similar examples in your daily life of the products you use. Just try and learn how these products achieve the level of smoothness that you love to use again and again. Using such products is like biting into a smooth chocolate pastry, where every trickle is filled with the taste and smoothness of chocolate.
A good UI delivers a great experience and a user-centric design system. UI/UX is at the forefront because you design from the ground-up — keeping the user interest and intent in mind.
I typically try to assess any design on the above parameters and then give feedback so that the team can align and deliver smooth user experiences. This is a good framework to adapt — so why not give it a try in your next UI/UX project…
Happy designing !!
