Designers should create experiences with the mentality of users. This process starts with innovation-design always helps users solve problems-while using traditional cognition and availability to further simplify the solution.
A useful website needs to be easy to learn, intuitive and easy to use, and be memorable to users. But most importantly, it must be simple! Let Jenny Reeves help us deconstruct interaction design this week and explore ways to simplify.
Simple or not is one of the first things that users will pay attention to when they first encounter and recognize a brand-new user interface. In order to make users leave a good first impression, user experience designers should continue to explore simplification methods in depth to make designs that seem simple in the first place easier. While providing a pleasant experience, give digital products a competitive advantage in the market
Modern people’s lives are getting busy, their attention span is shortening, and users’ standards for intuitive and easy-to-use applications are increasing. If an app seems a little bit difficult to use, many users will not bother to install it from the beginning. Users have certain psychological expectations for the speed, functionality, and design of the software, and the designer must at least meet these expectations (if not beyond). For users who sell an application for $1.99 will find it expensive, and for a world where two minutes of downloading will feel endless, this is a daunting task!
But the problem is that experience designers are often too close to the products they design, so that it is difficult to judge whether users really think the product is simple and straightforward, or is actually complicated and confused. Observing the user’s actual use of the product is the best way to test the effectiveness of the design, but complex user testing is not necessarily the best choice. In the worst case, it is difficult for experience designers to judge whether users really think the product is as easy to use as they thought. In order to solve this problem and provide an extremely simple user experience, designers should:
1. Deconstruct the user’s first contact experience with the application: expose the design flaws that affect the user’s first impression.
2. Balancing interface availability (Affordances) and traditional cognition (Conventions): exploring users’ traditional cognition and interaction habits of specific design elements can show opportunities for in-depth simplification.
3. Innovation first: simplify the user’s way of thinking, and truly solve the user’s problem is the top priority. When an innovative solution is proposed, we have time to further simplify the solution.
Create the best first impression
Apple’s app store had one million apps in 2013. A large number of products are similar in function, which gives users full choice. If an application is difficult to use, users can easily choose another simpler application to replace it. Therefore, the simplified user experience is directly linked to the user’s choice.
Let’s think about how users judge a product step by step:
1. Demand and search
Users will look for related applications according to their own needs. For example, a busy mother needs to share her schedule with her family. In order to meet this demand, she began to search for “family calendar app” in the app store, hoping to find the corresponding product.
2. First impression
According to data from Nielsen/Norman Group, the average time a user spends on a web page is 10-20 seconds. Let us suppose that the above-mentioned busy mother has 15 seconds to browse each search result, then when she sees the first application that appears, she will think: Is this the family calendar I’m looking for? application”?
She has spent 15 seconds thinking about whether this app can meet her needs before downloading and trying this app. She browses the screenshot of the app to determine whether it can do what she wants. Before deciding to download, these interfaces must clearly demonstrate the functionality of the application.
At this time, the task of helping her decide whether to download this application all fell on the simplicity of the application interface.
3. Basic guarantee
When the calendar app passed the first round of judgement by this mother, she started downloading it. She began to try to add a schedule. She uses the basic functions of the application to judge whether she has made the right decision. As a calendar application, simply adding a schedule is the most basic function guarantee.
The experience of using the basic functions must be simple. After that, users began to think: What else can this app do that I didn’t expect? Or is there any function of this app that I don’t need, that even affects my normal use?
For example, adding a quick connection for video calls to each schedule may be a very convenient feature for users. Although the mother didn’t specifically look for this feature at first, she might be happy that this app has this feature. But on the other hand, if the same function is added to the basic function of this application, and the user cannot close it in a normal way, then this function will become very annoying for the user. Additional functions must never affect the realization of basic functions. The simplicity is reflected in the balance between the basic functions of the product and the value-added factors.
Whether through the app store or other channels, experience designers need to consider the initial evaluation process of the user’s first contact with the product. Although this process may only last a few seconds-in fact, only a few seconds-a simple and clear design will leave a good first impression on the user. You know, simplicity can not only successfully persuade users to try your product, but also ensure that users continue to use your product.
Simplify through Conventions and Affordances
Steve Kruger discusses the creation of easy-to-use websites from multiple aspects in his best-selling book “Don’t Make Me Think”. He wrote that every unthinking mouse click and clear display of information is a good opportunity to simplify the user experience. Kruger suggested that one of the best ways to simplify the experience is to use the user’s experience with other websites. Designers should remember that “traditional cognition is our good teacher and helpful friend.”
Most experience designers should know that traditional cognition is the accumulation of user experience through the past, which leads to the anticipation of some design elements. For example, the “hamburger icon” represents the “menu” is widely used. Users have seen this icon in other applications, so they recognize this icon. Only a few users will not know what it does.
After leading users to use an app for the first time, experience designers should consider whether they have missed the opportunity to use traditional cognition. They may find that replacing some special elements with design elements known to users can improve ease of use. Whenever a designer uses a brand-new design language and ignores traditional design elements, users may not quickly understand the design intent, or even do not understand it at all. As a result, it will be very difficult for users to have a good first impression of the product.
Availability is similar to traditional cognition, but the difference is that the user’s cognition does not necessarily come from the experience of other applications. In the book “Design Psychology”, Donald Norman discussed this. He mentioned that certain design elements are “reasonable” because they imply things that people interact with every day.
For example, a magnifying glass icon representing search is reasonable because the user knows that the magnifying glass is used to find items. Interestingly, this is also an example of traditional cognition. Because of its availability, the magnifying glass has also become a traditional cognition. But binoculars and flashlights do not understand this way, although they are also often used to find objects.
What does this have to do with simplifying the experience? When designers refine the process of the first contact between users and applications, they have actually begun to find opportunities for in-depth simplification through traditional cognition. But in addition, designers also need to explore:
1. Availability that can be replaced by traditional cognition.
2. Ability to use the opportunity of availability.
Proper use of both can greatly improve user experience. First think about how to use traditional cognition to allow designers to make full use of the user’s previous experience. And availability is the second weapon to make use of users’ knowledge of the real world.
Continue to innovate
If we always try to keep things simple and familiar, where do we start with innovation? Whenever a designer strives to achieve the goal of simplification by balancing traditional cognition and availability, he/she must first think about a question:
Is a design element that exists and is placed in a certain webpage, application, or product really reasonable?
The advantage of this way of thinking is that it allows designers to think about innovation first, and then think about simplification. If an application interface is regarded as an independent individual, and not compared with other products on the market, this means that designers can jump out of the box of market standards. Next, use Kruger/Norman’s judgment method:
Does this design make full use of the user’s traditional understanding, so that the user can understand the design at a glance? Do the elements used in this design have sufficient availability to ensure the realization of the function?
In the end, users rely on the help of traditional cognition and availability to build a cognitive model of an interface, so as to achieve a fresh experience that is clear and easy to understand. Designers should explore the freedom brought by innovation. Only after innovation can the design elements be more directly and simply decided.
It is important to understand that the simple purpose is not to violate innovation, or to perform restricted functions. Applications with complex functions can also be very easy to use, while products with lightweight functions may also be overly complex in use.
For example, the contact information form function of a website is very simple, but it becomes complicated to fill in a certain amount of information using a mobile phone. On the contrary, a contact information form that can automatically extract the user’s geographic location is more complicated in function, but for the user, it saves some information to fill in, which makes the product easier to use.
In the final analysis, simple design mainly depends on the scene. As long as the designer designs around the scene, he will never have to sacrifice innovation to achieve simple goals.
Use simple experimentation
Simple design improves user experience by providing clarity: clear output (what can this app do for me?) and clear input (what do I need to do?). In the design process, the experience designer must step by step to ensure a simple experience. Deconstruct the user’s first impression, while rationally using traditional cognition and availability to further simplify the experience.
Here are some ideas for experience designers that can maximize simplification:
Competitive product analysis: Investigate competing products to find out how other products use traditional cognition and availability to improve product user experience.
Re-examine existing designs: Think about the functional goals behind the design elements, and use the concept of availability to explore ideas. Find and identify the source of the existing design (if there is a clear source) and try to think about alternatives and inspire new ideas.
Transcending traditional cognition: For product experiences that already rely heavily on traditional cognition, designers can challenge themselves to use less common but highly available solutions that can be quickly identified by users to replace traditional solutions. Today’s creativity may become a new tradition.
In all experiments, experience designers need to keep in mind that users are constantly looking for simple user experiences in digital products. This is an unchanging fact. Therefore, designers should create experiences with the minds of users. This process starts with innovation-design always helps users solve problems-while using traditional cognition and availability to further simplify the solution.
