Design is an Experience

Interaction Design December 11, 2007

What is design?

Is it the graphics we use? The colors? The fonts?
Yes, those all have some effect on the end experience, but I'm talking about something bigger. Something more encompassing. Design is the whole experience. It's the fusion of technology with humanity and the arts that makes good design.
You should put the human experience first in all aspects from when you create a product to how you build it, advertise it, package it, get it to the users and interact with them while they use it. In that sense, design can be described as a long-term, multi-faceted engagement that forces us to think about everything that touches the consumer, on every level of detail. And while there are sets of design principles and guidelines, there's no set formula all around. The best solutions are different every time with every product and every person.

So how does this Design work? Our goal is to create products that will be useful and usable to millions of people. To do that, we obviously first need a useful product. Something with functionality that will improve our users' lives. Now we need a method to let our users use the product that will be intuitive and easy for them. To do that, we need to understand people and their needs. We are translating the mental model into a machine model by developing interface standards that match up to familiar things in the real world. We develop prototypes and test them. We analyze our audiences and the way they interact with technology. We look at the downfalls of other products and figure out how to improve them.

A Brief Look at the Mental Model

Users have goals in mind of what they want to accomplish. They also have an idea of the steps they need to take to accomplish these goals. Goal + Action = Expection, that is, they have some idea of what performing the action will do. When something goes against expectation, we have confusion. And we don't like that.

We put a lot of thought into how we design our products so that our users don't have to. Funny, but we want the user to focus solely on what they want to accomplish and not be distracted by finding the right tools. We know what they want to do and how they can do it, so it's just a matter of making it easy for them.

Say you want to build a model airplane. You as the user know what you want to do. We as the developer should provide you with the tools. But it's not simply a matter of giving you a bin of materials, paint, plastic, etc. It's figuring out which tools you need the most, which are secondary, which should be on the table and which should be in the drawer, etc. You want everything at your fingertips without being overwhelmed by too much clutter.

Analogy

Ever tour a new house being built to see the layout structure? Maybe you find that the living room only has one doorway or the upstairs bathroom is way down the hall from the bedrooms and you think, "Hm, well that's inconvenient." Or maybe you're reading a newspaper or magazine and get confused by the way the text and images are put together on a page. Or you start using a new computer program and find that buttons aren't quite in the places you'd expect?

These are all examples of going against intuition. That is, creating something that doesn't foundationally make sense to the user. And we're entirely against this. The architect may have his reasons for giving the living room only one door, but if we're finding that user after user finds this inconvenient, then it's not the architect's call anymore and we're gonna add another door. And then we're gonna find out what's the best place that door should lead. And then we're gonna figure out what kind of door we're going to put and how it's going to look. And then we're gonna make sure that it's easy to get to the door from anywhere in the room.

Why So Involved?

You may think this is tedious work. Why is it so important that we go to such lengths to listen to people and design in such detail? We've seen plenty of examples where products that are wildly successful lack thoughtful design. You could just throw in a bunch of standard design elements and call it a day. But having these elements is not enough to make your product the best it can be. Your turn to shine comes in HOW you use these elements to your advantage. How do you layout the structure of your application? Where do you place the buttons? How many clicks does it take to perform any action? When users open your application, what's the first thing they're going to do?

Can it really hurt to invest the energy? The payoff may be more than you hoped.

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