My family went on vacation last month and rented a tall, skinny apartment in Amsterdam. The apartment was fully remodeled, with nice fixtures and plenty of space for typical tourist activities; however, there was no place to put the soap in the shower. Ding 1 against the user experience. I need to interact with soap and water while I’m in the shower.
Image may be NSFW.
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User Experience (UX) is what you think it is: “the perceptions and responses that result from the use or anticipated use of a product, system, or service” (ISO 9241-210).
Looked at another way, UX is what technologists put their users through. It’s what users have to do (or tolerate) to get anything done, to find anything out, or to get someone to help them.
There are two things about the ISO definition that deserve your attention.
1. It’s not just about software
Although the term “user experience” is commonly applied to websites and apps, UX is relevant when considering anydesigned system that a human has to interact with. This includes applications, hardware & accessories, service, processes, furniture, buildings, how you setup your cable, what happens when your car needs to get fixed, where your refrigerator is in relation to your stove, and so on. It applies to how usable something is as well as how useful and appealing it is.
UX applies to everything created by humans for humans. Who am I to limit it in an attempt to define it?
If you’re a technologist, you may expect me to focus on human-computer interaction, but I prefer my shower example. The non-computing world is full of UX inspiration as well as examples of UX gone wrong.
2. The user experience is subjective
The user experience is subject to the opinions of your users combined with the situation they are in at the moment. Something that one person considers to be a good user experience is not always the best experience for another person. Something that is a good experience at one point in the day is a poor experience at another point.
The good news is that opinions tend to vary along predictable lines. The bad news is that it’s tricky to figure out what those lines are because users are different than the people that design products.
In order to anticipate user needs and expectations, the first thing that a good user experience needs is a real target user (or a target group of users). By deciding who your target user is, you can identify or make assumptions about what is important to them, how they generally think about an issue (or their “mental model”), and what other things are in their environment that may interact with their experience with your technology.
Take my shower example. Its owners made a lot of assumptions: That people renting this apartment didn’t want to share a single bathroom between three bedrooms — so they installed 2 showers. They assumed the people in the individual bedrooms had a very close relationship — because each shower was located within a bedroom and had glass walls. They also assumed (probably not consciously) that the people using the shower in our bedroom either liked lukewarm water that would not produce much steam or they would be showering with all of the windows open (since the weather is so nice in the spring).
This final assumption proved false in our case, because we like hot water and were visiting in the cold, wet winter. That led to a full-on UX fail. Luckily, I had an extra elastic headband and a plastic bag to keep the smoke detector from going off each time we showered.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Poor user experiences aren’t usually planned. They tend to result from the technology itself.
This is especially the case when it comes to computing technology.
Why? Because it’s hard to build a viable product out of technology — both from an engineering and a business perspective. Understandably, product teams get wrapped up in building their product. As it’s being built, they often fall victim to the fallacy that other people are similar to them and will either understand how a product is used or be motivated to learn how to use it.
A good user experience fits the user, you don’t change the user to fit it.
To create a good user experience, you need to know your place. Help the user accomplish their goals without getting in their way or making their tasks more onerous. Make them have a great time (on vacation) without noticing your technology. Make them super-human by making your interface second nature, allowing them to do more than they could unaided.
So, what’s user experience? It’s my obsession and I want it to be yours too.
Do you have any examples of products or systems that have experiences that pleasantly surprise you? Why? Tell the world about it in the comments. Feed your obsession.