Designing user experiences beyond delight

As designers, we love when something gives us and our customers delight. A helpful nudge at the right time, one click to do something that used to be a pain, or helping our customers make difficult decisions.

The right solutions remove friction when possible and make sense in the journey of a product. You create magic when steps you’d normally take for granted are taken out.

By rethinking and removing the steps needed to reach the end goal, users will barely notice what the product is doing for them. And, more importantly, they won’t have to think. They can just do what already feels natural.

But what do natural flows feel like, and how do we create them?

A magical way to reach your goal

If you’ve ever unlocked a car with the keys in your pocket or bag, you probably won’t want to go back to the old way. There’s no setup: key-to-car connection works out of the box. And all friction is removed—there’s no button-pressing to open the car door.

What makes it so great, is that the engineers and designers kept the main goal in mind: getting into your car. The goal wasn’t to end the tragedy of opening the car door with the metal end of the key — key remotes solved that. You no longer have to search through your bag to find the keys. You don’t have to push any buttons. When the car is locked, you just open the car door and you’re in.

With your key somewhere in your car, you press the Start button and the engine starts. And you can drive away without having touched your key once.

A delightful but less magical way to connect

For the 2018 iPad Pro, Apple made a second generation of their drawing pen called Apple Pencil. To connect and start using the Pencil, you snap it to the side of the iPad. A delightful little HUD confirms the connection and you can start using the Pencil.

It’s a nice solution (and it’s miles better than setting up the first Apple Pencil) but it’s not intuitive. It’s delightful, not magical. Nobody buys a pen and holds it to the side of their notebook before they write with it.

You want to draw. You don’t want to connect.

You probably already guessed that the most natural way to set up your Pencil would be to tap it on the iPad’s display, and then be able to use it. Immediately. A HUD could still confirm the connection. This way, the user won’t have to think once.

Mixing reality & virtual reality

We’ll find magic in the world of virtual reality, too.

Let’s see how wonderfully Oculus Quest solved the problem of A) making you aware of the boundaries of your safe-to-play area while B) also giving you the ability to quickly peek into the real world.

Oculus’ guardian feature lets you naturally draw an area on the floor that you find safe to play and walk around in while wearing your VR headset. The four cameras on the headset make the feature so reliable that you can walk around freely while you’re deep in your game. With your eyesight blocked.

Where other headsets have buttons to switch between VR and the real world, Oculus lets you take a peek — or walk out — and then get back in to your game.

When you’re in the VR world, the virtual wall is hidden by default. But when you or your hands come close to the border of your safe-to-play area, where they might hit a lamp, cabinet, or wall, Oculus will show you the virtual wall as a warning. If you come close enough to the virtual wall, you’ll get a peephole (they call it Passthrough) into the real world. Stick your head out even further — or walk out of the zone — and you’ll see the room you’re in, with a virtual wall inside the room. It’s mindblowing.

I’m not a gamer but when I first tried this I was sold. I pre-ordered the Quest on my way home because I wanted to have this for myself.

I mean, can anything feel more natural than literally walking out of the virtual world into the real world? This video shows how setting up the safe zone and walking out of it works.

Tap to go

At Soda we were privileged to work on a few fantastic (read: award-winning) products, too.

One of those is Tap to go—a frictionless way to pay at train station supermarkets. Because the location and context were about speed, we designed the payment experience for speed. In dream scenarios, you grab your product and walk out of the store.

We made it so that there are only three steps: tap your card on the product label, grab your product and go catch your train.

So how do you create magic?

In design, we aim to reduce friction. But when we remove friction we create a seamless experience that becomes magical and natural. We need to think one step ahead, question traditional steps, and focus on the primary goal. To get effort out of the way.

Does the user want to connect their Pencil, or draw with it?

About Soda

We are Soda studio, a digital product design agency in Amsterdam, specialized in seamless product design for mobility, e-commerce, and complex B2B applications.

At Soda studio, we love working with the brand designers at Resoluut, copywriters at Mr. Koreander, and UX researchers at Milkshake.

Want to know more about us? View our work or contact us at www.sodastudio.nl