UX 2.0 — The Shift is Happening
Did you know that one of the worst nuclear disasters in history, the Three Mile Island accident, was not due to human error, but rather due to design flaws? Specifically because of “ambiguous control room indicators in the power plant’s User Interface”.
Donald Norman, an usability engineering expert on the investigating team, said that the control panels looked as if ‘they were deliberately designed to cause errors.’
Design, specifically UI and UX, can save lives. When it isn’t doing that, it can make a product a thing of desire (Spectacles by Snap Inc.) or it can make an app, addictive (Snapchat).
Case in point — The Battle for Search
Long before Google, there was AltaVista which ruled Internet Searches. In fact, between 1995 and 1998, it was the ‘Google of its time’. It was much heralded for its path-breaking tech as much as it was loved for its singular purpose of finding any and all information available on the web. AltaVista was truly unrivaled.
But, no one could have guessed that in the 3 years that followed, AltaVista would go on a downward spiral and lose its leadership position to Google. It was indeed, the beginning of its end.
While there were many factors that led to its downfall, the inflection point happened in the year 1999, when it was sold to CMGI.
From being a “no-frills” search engine, AltaVista transformed into a web portal — following the herd (Yahoo, Lycos, AOL et al). The Wikipedia article on AltaVista perfectly captures this shift in the origin story,
Another distinguishing feature of AltaVista was its minimalistic interface, which was lost when it became a Web portal
Google, on the other hand, provided exactly what it was devised for (which the incumbent lost focus on) — Search. Their motto was simple,
Do one thing, and do it really well.
In fact, Google’s core philosophy to this day, and one of their 10 goals as stated on their website is,
to have people leave our website as quickly as possible
which was counter-intuitive to the prevailing notion of that time. But Google’s unwavering focus towards its user and “providing the best user experience possible” meant they broke the one inviolable rule to stay true to the vision.
(Note: AltaVista did revert to its original minimalistic interface, but it was a case of too little, too late. “Googling” had already become a verb by then)
Moral of the Story
Right from early stage startups trying to find their product-market fit, to Fortune 500 firms focusing on the bottom end of the funnel, User Experience has become the focal point.
Charlie Claxton, the Chief Creative Strategist at UpTop, captures the shift succinctly,
“you hire UX design experts to improve your bottom line, not simply to make things pretty.”
He further mentions that brands now see UX as a “must-have” rather than as a “nice-to-have”.
Top e-tailers have taken note and let their UX do most of the talking for the brand (and not paid marketing). They are relying on UI /UX to clearly communicate what the brand stands for and what their product does as quickly and as efficiently as possible.
A 1988 book written by Tom Gilb mentions that,
Every $1 put into UX yields a $2 to $100 return.
A 1:100 return is incredible and brands know that UX is improving retention while contributing to their profit margins. Therefore, we are seeing an increasingly higher amount of the product/ marketing budget being invested in UX by the top companies.
Companies have understood that only UX can bridge that crucial gap between their business objectives and a customer’s wants & needs. They have realised that marketing spends can’t fix problems inherent to the product. It’s the UX and the interaction flows and the micro experiences and the interface — the entire packaging that makes the difference.
Research studies and market trends point towards this shift:
- Companies with highly effective UX have increased their revenue by 37%
- The Top 10 UX leaders in America outperform the S&P with close to triple the returns.
- ESPN.com revenues jumped 35% after truly listening to their community and incorporating suggestions into their homepage redesign
- Judgments on web site credibility are 75% based on a website’s overall aesthetics
- First impressions are 94% design-related
The Future
Specifically for e-commerce firms, we believe that by 2020, user experience will overtake price and other non-product areas as the key brand differentiator.
The Shift is happening. The era of UX 2.0 has begun.
Are you on board?
Disclosure: I consult for 1Thing.design on Brand Communications. You can use this link to get a limited-period FREE UX / design review of your product/ service .
1THING is a UX / UI design company, crowd-sourcing India’s top design talent, to help startups & businesses design better and more desirable products through effective UX.
