Conversational Design
I love creating interfaces which talk to the users. Today is a world of smart users and they are very busy in their lives as well so there is a very small time they have for interacting with your product or interface. I call them impatient users. A lot of people fall in this category today.
For instance… I go to a shopping store to buy a shirt. I enter and find different sections of products without any information displayed. Now I am pissed off. I try to look for a shirt counter where I can see some good stuff. After 15 mins walking in different product sections finally I got the shirts zone. Wait a minute…!!! There are thousands of shirts displayed. How will I pick my favorite brand which I love when there is no information at a glance. Do I need to open every single shirt to check that out. Noopooooo… I can not do this. I am happy to go back home, its very difficult.
I decide to visit another store for shirt. I enter XYZ store and find a sales person right infront of me asking…
Salesman: What do you like to have, sir?”
Me: I wanna buy some shirt.
Salesman: Great sir, please proceed to R17 row, you will land into shirts department.
I follow instructions and find the right place where another salesman welcomes me.
Salesman: Which brand would you like to explore?
Me: I want Peter England.
Salesman: Rack 5 has the stuff you need. Feel free to choose your’s.
I feel very happy as I got my stuff within 15 to 20 seconds and I am done. I buy a nice shirt and happy to go home.
The only difference here is conversation experience. This is how conversation improves user experience.
What is Conversation design?
The herhypothesize here focuses on communicating every single micro-information to the user for better relationship and understanding with the interface to achieve maximum user satisfaction.
Conversation design helps to achieve maximum value in a limited time.
Here are some cracking tips to make the design talking:
First 5 seconds are very important – When user lands on your application he scans the information, it is very important that he gets clear instructions and call to actions right in front of him. It is like interface is welcoming the user and telling him the next steps. If he gets what is upto in first 5 seconds, that will be a great achievement and if no, he will drop of. Github is very beautifully designed. User can see the main content and actionable items immediately as he lands on the page. Action items are very much visible.
Do not loose the user – Always user should know what is happening at the particular time while interacting with the interface. If user feels he is lost or confused about what is happening in application, then it is a murder of user experience. Gdrive design helps us understand the value of micro-information. If user uploads some file to gdrive he gets very precious indication when the upload starts and what is the percentage of it at a particular time. Micro-information always keeps the user educated.
Keep the user interested – Always show something interesting on screen even if user is waiting for some content to load or user finds some empty state of a page. Keep something to read for the user so that he can understand what is going on at that time. Basecamp servers it very well. It gives the user what is the next step he should take.
Error messages are very dangerous — Micro-information helps user to make less mistakes. Try to make errors friendly instead of negative. Error should suggest user how to deal with the problems. Errors should not look like ghosts, on the other hand errors should look like solutions or helping hand to complete a particular task.
