A walk with Experience Design — on any normal day

The focus of satisfying the end user rather than checking off the client requirement document in mere paper is the basis for Experience Design.

The topic revolves within day to day life, let me present with simple physical and virtual objects which we cannot avoid interaction on daily basis to bring out the hidden user experience aspects, that a user demands subconsciously.

The first thing which we handle in the morning would have been a tooth brush, had I asked myself this question 15 years back. But now it’s obviously our mobile. The buzzing sound of alarm which wakes you up in the morning, how does it feel to have a snooze button which is not accessible by your thumb? As frustrating as possible isn’t it? adding on to the wake up scare!

The requirement from a Business Analyst may only state two buttons in display “Snooze & Stop”. But the essences of placing the right thing at the right place for the right need — brings out the best in any product by delivering the best experience along with the business needs. The success factor of any application revolves around the feel good factor — the reflection of using a product or application.

Let’s get deeper into the other factors that define user experience. The next instance let us discuss about GPS equipped car; the features maybe accessible by touch, but the user would expect the application to respond to his voice command while driving. The design that doesn’t bridge the gaps fails to satisfy the user needs eventually fails in the market. Satisfying more than one sense (in this cases auditory, visual, tactile) marches a product towards its success.

So you have woken up to your alarm, reached your destination with ease, parked your car — what next?

You hit the elevator and see the buttons haywire, someone cranky enough placed the buttons in no order. It’s not a big deal to find the number in a 10 storey building but yet you would feel annoyed. Think of it in ascending order (starting with 0 in the lowest corner — match between the system and real world — lowest floor to the topmost floor) and that’s how we expect it to be. Anything which lack logic & clarity would obviously qualify for a confusing design.

When we find it annoying to find a number that is visible to us think of a visually challenged person entering an elevator alone. A good design becomes the best when it carters to every class of user what we say now as inclusive design. A button that has “Braille” (engraved) can serve the best and a voice notification of the floor in which the door has opened saves them from embarrassment of getting down in the wrong floor or asking for help. The user class coverage becomes the essence of success here. Coined as Inclusive Design — not just cater the visually impaired but also to expand to help the temporarily disabled (a person under gone cataract recently) or situationally disabled (just you or me with a dust particle in eye).

Now that you have reached your office without much of a hassle, let’s brew some coffee for you!! Though you are physically present next to the vending machine your thoughts have wandered off to the presentation that starts in 45 minutes and you are trying to recollect the slides one by one as you pick your tea bag and you get annoyed when the machine doesn’t seem to work! You mutter under your breath and ward of your wandering thoughts to check the machine alas what bad design. You need to use both your hands to press the vending machine for just a cup of hot water.

Ah! someone wanted your hands safely tucked away from the extreme hot water which could blister your skin — cutting through the layers of consciousness and demanding your at most attention to the current task in hand (literally task in hand), maybe a safe design — give it a thought won’t you?

Moving on to your cabin, let’s get into your ultimate PC. The means provided to open your favorite applications/websites are countless. So why do we need so many shortcut provisions? your toolbar, taskbar, desktop shortcuts, keyboard shortcuts and the list goes on. Isn’t it pretty simple? — Flexibility and efficiency of use

You are done with your day and all your meetings went as planned. Yet another good day you tick off your calendar and on the way you hop-off to fetch some cash from the ATM. You find it pretty user friendly when the application has your favorite amount retrieved for you when you are in real hurry and in need to complete the transaction with just a few simple steps — Ease of use

You reach home get cozy and start to watch a movie which your friend recommends to be good, which seems to be an alien language to you. So you decide to see with subtitle, but unfortunately the subtitle sync time doesn’t match the dialog sequence. The excitement of watching a movie is lost. Had that been with perfect time sync, the movie would have made sense and created an impact in your mind. Failing to create an impact is equal to losing a client/customer.

So from alarm that wakes you early in the morning to a late night movie that keeps you awake, everything demands better user experience. Not every demand is explicitly jotted down in the requirement document, so how do you find it?

Well it’s time to exploit the principles of experience design or deem the product to the trash bin.