Why patterns matter

And how they define the discipline of digital product design

Lorenz Vierecke, Director User Experience Design at the SinnerSchrader Swipe office in Berlin, shares his insights about systematic UX design on the series “Why patterns matter”.

The human mind

Human perception is build upon patterns. Our brain learns through repetition and recognition and always tries to find regularities. A child imitates its mother to learn how to walk, how to interact with people, how to behave in different social contexts. So our everyday life behaviour functions through patterns of adaptation, imitation and repetition. The behaviourist B.J. Fogg therefore also describes habits as tiniest units of human behaviour. Those habits and routines arise out of unconscious or conscious repetition of little actions. What makes habits so powerful is the instinctive action we take them through. We do not have to think about how to do something, we just do it over and over again like we are used to. You could also put it like this: behavioural patterns which have proven over time minimize the amount of decisions you have to take consciously. They let you act more efficiently during the day and save your attention for problems which are new to you. That is why it can be pretty hard to change habits too, once they are established — like quit smoking or losing weight. So what does that mean regarding the design of an user experience?

Understanding the role of UX design

UX Design these days is often misunderstood as the profession which designs the visual surface of a digital product in terms of screen design — in fact it is much more.

User Experience Design means the holistic design of behavioral patterns by crafting each touch point of a service.

User Experience Design can be found while opening a package, driving a car or learning a new language. Basically the design of an experience can touch anything, but at its core it is always about defining a digital product by creating a compelling set of usage patterns. It is about crafting those tiny behavioral patterns mentioned before. A usage pattern which helps the user getting a certain job done will become a habit pretty quickly. This means that the conscious design of user experiences, taking the new opportunities of the digital age into account, can be a massive competitive advantage. That is why from our point of view the first task of an UX designer should be evaluating the relevance of a service by defining its application and its ability to fundamentally rewrite the users perception of a certain context. So you need to identify the crucial job first, which needed to be done by your target group, before finding an enabler which makes it possible to truly redefine a certain user experience. If you can condense those findings into a touchpoint strategy you will create relevance for your service by changing the behavioral patterns of its users over time. Consider the silicon valley giants like Google, Facebook or Amazon who are truly changing our experience of searching for information, interacting with people or the general experience of shopping. Those corporations are building usage patterns which in the end recreate the way we behave.

Stay tuned

We at SinnerSchrader Swipe respect product design as a deeply pattern driven profession. Therefore we we want to share our knowledge as well as our experiences on this blog. So follow us if you are interested in all kinds of relevant patterns in the field of digital product design.

Author: Lorenz Vierecke