Bad UX Design Is Not Fine; It’s Torture.

Have you ever found yourself frustrated trying to find a setting or a particular icon on website or mobile application? If yes, that was a bad experience you faced. You as a user got lost in a maze: a website or an application, where you saw no clue which direction would lead you to a finish line, an expected icon, and after spending forever trying to find the direction, you said “bye then” to the site with a temper, and suddenly closed the browser. What an unpleasant experience!

The kind of situations above seems to be dissatisfy to both users and companies. For the user, they got unsavory impression from the service, and for the company, they lost their source of income. Thus, many firms realizes about this poor UX, and try to make sure their products meets three main design criteria that answer consumers’ needs; usefulness, usability, and desirability. In Universal Design: Principles and Models, Null (2017) suggested that a salable product doesn’t necessarily have to apply all these criteria, but a perfect product that will positively not cause bad experience for users should be combined with these design criteria: usefulness, usability, and desirability.

However, some might ask what if a company doesn’t care about UX design, what is going to probably happen? So just take a look at these examples of e-commerce websites which the owners aren’t serious about UX design.

The first example

Customer: Could I have the size 36?

Store: 36 is currently out of stock. Would you like to choose other sizes else?

Customer: How can I know which size is in or out of stock. It’s all there!

Store: Oh sorry, here it is. This one shows you which size is available.

Customer: Um… with this 0.1% fader shade? I almost couldn’t spot it.

These look-alike colors of the sizes provide bad UX to users as the design lacks usability. Even though many people realize that the fader color figure illustrates the unavailable sizes and the darker one shows in-stocked sizes, it is still difficult to separate those two. Even worse, what about an old people whose visions are not as good as teenagers? and what about a color blinder? Will they be able to differentiate which size is in or out of stock? This poor experience upsets customers who are interested in the product. They will probably get annoyed that they can’t choose a particular size, and they finally might hesitate or cancel their plans to buy the item. However, there are several better ways to indicate the size status; for example, use strikethrough figures as the unavailable sizes or just only show the available sizes like the photo below.

The second example

Customer: Excuse me, where is a navigation bar to online shop?

Store: It is there: next to our branding logo?

Customer: But I can’t even see your logo.

Store: Maam, it is there. If you have an eye, gaze at it!

Customer: Oh sorry, I finally found them.

Store: Yeah, welcome to our online shop. Enjoy your visit.

Customer: Ah… your online shop is kind of asymmetric in a mess way. I might just come back.

Store: But our products are stunning beautiful.

Customer: Seeing from your hard to use homepage and the design of your online shop, I can’t believe you.

The website puzzles users at a very first glance since the logo, navigation menus, and background photo are so harmonious to each other that they aren’t noticeable. This lack of usability gives an uneasy experience to users because they have to gaze at the homepage for a while to find navigation menus. Even worse some might never find them. What follow are two cases; if the users can’t find those navigation menus, they might just leave the website, or if the users finally find navigation menus, they still think that the shop is not quite professional. Plus with the messy navigation menus in online shop page, not only the usability this website lacks but also the desirability. The users who are already upset with the entrance of the website now are getting disappointed at the shop’s webpage design. It shows that the shop doesn’t delicately care about looks and design even on its own website. Due to the deficiencies of usability and desirability, the users would likely cut the shop out of their wish, and go to some other brands else. To avoid these lose-lose experience: unusable and undesirable website pages, choosing a new background photo and redesigning the navigation bars’ looks and levels will definitely better up the UX. Below is a better e-commerce website’s navigation bars which are noticeable, stylish, and symmetric.

The last example

Store: Hello madam. How are you?

Customer: I am good, thanks.

Store: Anything I could help please let me know.

Customer: Sure! I just wanna browsing.

Store: Make it your home then.

Customer: Excuse me, how much are they?

Store: … (not answering.)

Customer: Okay, I’m leaving.

Don’t forget that some users come to a website not to purchase but to check and compare prices, and in this case, the website lacks usefulness of detailing its product pricings. In the photo above, prices are not shown at any items. If a user wants to know the price of the Men’s Printed Lacoste Logo Cotton T-Shirt, Can the website answer his need? No, the shop’s website fails to present the usefulness of detailing product information. The user who wants to check the price of the printed logo t-shirt might just close the website tab since he can’t know the pricing through the website. Thus, realizing and presenting all the usefulness the website is expected to give is a way to fix this poor UX, like the below website which its owners realize that one of the usefulness of his website is to indicate each item pricing.

Overall, user experience is like a bridge that connects customers and owners to their finish line. If a product has usefulness, usability, and desirability, a customer sure does have a great UX. On the other hand, if a product doesn’t apply those three main product design criteria, a customer probably ends up with a bad UX, and that the bridge connecting users and owner would be automatically swept away.

Reference:

Null, R. L. (2017). Universal design: Principles and models. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.