I wonder if this whole concept of user experience needs to be re-evaluated.
For the majority of “user experience” people out there, the craft is primarily a technical one. It’s about expediency – moving someone from one place to another as quickly and easily as possible. Admittedly, it’s a noble and worthy goal – we’ve all been to way too many sites that are confusing, awkward, and underwhelming.
But it seems to me as though there’s a whole lot more to creating a satisfying user experience than employing lots of white space and using breadcrumbs. We should certainly work to make our sites as friendly as possible to navigate around, but we also must acknowledge the other goals of people visiting our pieces of the web.
Tom Peters took on Six Sigma about 10 years back for similar reasons. While he undoubtedly recognized the value that quality control can have in improving the lives of both customers and organizations, Peters places it not as the capstone of effective business strategy, but as the cost of entry. Thing is, a product or service that is predictably boring is still boring.
The same can be said for designing online experiences. I’ve worked on enough sites to know that crafting an extremely usable site that is dull, irrelevant and uninteresting doesn’t do anyone much good.
This may seem like a no-brainer, but if you look at the bulk of the sites that brought in usability “experts,” you might surprise yourself. The sites are very clear about what’s a link, what the navigation scheme is, etc. But by focusing on the organization of the content, they’re missing a big piece of the puzzle – whether the content should be there in the first place.
The web is not just a medium for disseminating information in the most efficient way possible. People spend hours upon hours online, for a myriad of reasons – they could be lonely, and are looking for a place to interact with other people or feel like part of a community. They could be looking to unwind and forget about their problems for a bit. They could be looking for an avenue for self-expression.
For too many sites focused on usability, the function is proceeding the form. Because they don’t engage with their visitors emotionally, don’t appeal to their sensibilities, and lead with the assumption that the “user” is just looking for content “chunked” appropriately, they are most likely less effective than they could be.
Six Sigma changed the world of business and made quality goods an assumption in the minds of consumers. But Six Sigma is now the staring gate – today’s business buzzwords aren’t about quality but about “experience” – being intentional about the way the company interacts with the customer. As the Internet continues to get more crowded, sites that are deemed “usable” will simply be the foot in the door. The big opportunity is waiting for the companies who realize that “user experience” design is 10% about a usable site and 90% creating an experience that resonates with people.
