HIGH-TECH Designing the User Experience

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Designing the User Experience 1

DESIGNING THE USER EXPERIENCEIt is an extraordinary fact that five times as many people will tell you about a bad experience as will tell you about a good one. It’s an even more amazing fact that the English language has three times more negative ‘feeling’ words than positive ones! Add this to the power and penetration of social media and you can understand why any product or service that fails to deliver an acceptable user experience will be viral in seconds — thus causing irreparable damage to your brand.

What do I mean by a user experience, especially in the high tech sector? Well, it has evolved over the last four decades from its early description as man-computer interaction into today’s more inclusive incarnation. It has shifted away from usability engineering to a much richer scope of experience, where users’ feelings, motivations and values are given much, if not more, attention than efficiency, effectiveness and basic subjective satisfaction.

The user experience covers a wider more holistic perspective of how we, as consumers, feel about using a product, service or system. Performance is a given. The focus is more on pleasure and value. However, the exact definition, framework, and elements are still evolving. It is constantly updating as changing circumstances and new innovations spark new behaviors, and products and services morph into single entities with their boundaries disappearing.

This presents problems within organizations. Who is responsible for designing the user experience? Industrial designers, human factors engineers, psychologists, anthropologists, design engineers, service engineers? Of course it should be all of them but the key issue is working in a business environment where the culture is consumer focused. Think of Apple. Think of Nespresso.

This environment blows away the traditional siloed, over the wall development and engages in every step of the user journey. And don’t imagine that this is only relevant to consumer focused products! It also applies to complex instruments, machines or tools. No matter what it might be, the user expects it to make his/her task as efficient and as enjoyable as possible and ideally a delight too.

The user experience, which is about understanding all the touch points on the journey and creating delight at each one, is fast becoming the most important aspect in new product development. Most expect and demand that a product or service works, so performance is now assumed. The user experience is where the emotional world meets the practical and when ‘how you feel’ becomes the key reason to buy.

So, with this blend of new ingredients, what’s the recipe to achieve successful user experiences?

...five times as many people will tell you about a bad experience as will tell you about a good one.

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FROM FIRST SIGHT TO DISPOSAL BUILDING THE BRAND AND REPUTATION WITH USERSBefore I go any further let’s explore what I mean by the user journey. In its simplest terms we want to perform a task; make a cup of coffee, cut the grass, clean the apartment, print out the family photos — or maybe just be entertained — and we need to find the right product or service to help us. Where do we first hear about or see what we might want? A TV advert, a web search, in a store, a friend’s recommendation? Any or all of these creates an initial impression: price point, suitability, desirability, status. This ‘first sight’ is the trigger that determines whether we want to know more. If we’re sufficiently interested, the next stage takes us to a ‘point of sale’ where we decide to make a purchase. This early part of the user journey is heavily influenced by brand and the purchasing decision will often be about how we feel about a brand, its reputation, its appeal to us, the status it brings and the value it offers. This is the point at which our expectations are set.

The product arrives at our home or we take it home from the store. Do we have to fight to open the packaging? Is our first experience disappointment at having to delve past user guides printed in 17 languages, cables and a power adapter before we get to our purchase? Are we left with a pile of packaging materials that we’ll have to dispose of? All these aspects start to signal a negative experience.

Packaging is a real design challenge: to clearly articulate the brand and product on the outside, whilst making sure the goods arrive safely and undamaged inside; and to use materials that can be disposed of in an environmentally friendly way. Small products are often encased in larger than necessary hang cell blister packs to minimise pilfering in store. Good for the retailer but a nightmare for us consumers who struggle to avoid cutting ourselves as we attempt to release our little gem of consumer electronics.

So that first physical contact with our new purchase can be negative rather than the delight we should expect.

After the unpacking we get to the product. Is there a quick reference guide to get us up and running or is it obvious and intuitive? Hopefully it is and we thoroughly enjoy its first use. Did it do what we wanted and totally match our expectations and did it introduce a new way of operation that caused us to change our behavior? We now demand that products deliver all we expected and more.

Maybe certain little details make us chuckle as we realize the cable is automatically tidied away after use; there’s an LED to indicate the machine needs emptying; or there are bags and a pick-up service organized to return spent cartridges. This is when at first use we begin to think that this great brand has done all our thinking for us... what a great experience! And it’s changed the way we do things in ways we didn’t know were possible. It’s so convenient and has saved us loads of time so we’re free to do other things.

The User Journey: From First Sight to Disposal

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Great, but we’re only half way along the journey because this delightful new product that excels at its job and changed the way we do things has to deliver consistently throughout its product life. Can our enthusiasm be maintained through its routine use and will we tell our friends about it? Will it become a trusted friend? This is where brand loyalty kicks in and is predicated by creating a highly desirable, reliable, easy to use product. This means well engineered, smart technology delivered in a simple and uncomplicated way. Is it smart enough to overcome the irritation of having to complete a sequence of events that become tedious after we’ve used the product several times?

At this point it is worth quoting Sir Jonathan Ive, SVP Apple Inc. He was recently asked how often he said ‘no’ to developing new product ideas. His response was to say that Apple said ‘no’ quite a lot . . . but mostly because they didn’t believe they could execute some ideas well enough and to their own demanding standards. As his responsibility extends right across the user experience space, it’s clear that Apple continues to set the bar at a high level. Their mantra is clear – elegant simplicity with a ‘less is more’ attitude to everything they do.

So back to the journey . . .

Having succeeded in producing a reliable, easy to use product that has delighted us, can it cope with extreme use? This really means designing a product that can withstand the anticipated misuse that regrettably is a feature of everyday life. Whilst this starts with making sure all safety and regulatory standards are satisfied, it also means trying to forecast the type of behaviors that users might adopt. You can never design for all eventualities but you have to make sure that in attempting to improve user experiences you don’t create unintended consequences. It’s a fact that we humans are very resourceful and can always manage to find a work around or ingenious way to use a product for a completely unsuitable task. This is both a strength and weakness.

Some defy common sense and designers of fork lift trucks could never imagine such bizarre usage, but on the positive side without human ingenuity it’s unlikely that SMS (text messaging) would have become a primary revenue generator of modern communication. It was consumers who took what was a peripheral feature on the mobile phone and converted into the most popular means of communication.

Finally, we reach the journey’s end.

The product has come to the end of its useful life. What are we going to do with it? Can we dispose of it in an efficient and cost effective way? This is a rising priority and will continue as companies experience the pressure on resources and consumer attitudes change towards those who behave poorly. How this is dealt with remains to be seen but it may manifest itself in a number of different ways: a short life with a well-planned environmentally friendly disposal; a longer life with repairable parts; an even longer life with a completely managed collection service at the end. In any event this will become an increasingly important part of the product design specification as it contributes to brand reputation and an enhanced consumer experience. Think of Bosch cordless power tools.

...Apple continues to set the bar at a high level. Their mantra is clear elegant simplicity with a ‘less is more’ attitude to everything they do.

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CHANGING BEHAVIORSYou can see from the user journey that it moves across the whole product lifecycle. So not surprisingly it’s not a thing that you talk about as exclusively ‘front end’. Whilst it dominates at the beginning it is present at all stages of the product life cycle and for those that practice it, it’s embedded in company culture. This means that the service engineer is as much in touch with delivering a positive user experience as the product designer.

Designing a user experience is not easy if the company is not a people focused business. This does mean changing to a more consumer centric culture where users are front of mind in the business. Change of this magnitude can be very difficult as it has to be across the board – not just the design and development department.

Such a change can only be achieved over time and is best handled in a way that is easy, rewarding and normal. Easy means ensuring that people have the skills and knowledge to make the change and that there are no organizational obstacles to overcome. Rewarding means that achieving the change in business culture will bring about results that are valuable to the individual as well as the company. Normal means everyone accepting that this is the way that the business and its people need to think and behave from now on.

These behavior changes are essential ingredients in designing user experiences. It takes time but if the culture doesn’t shift there will always be those who can dilute or delete critical experience ideas and compromise innovative solutions. So before you think about approaches to designing effective user experiences the culture needs to be right. A good start is dismantling any barriers that might exist between departments – be more holistic in your thinking and more collaborative. As an external consultant I’ve always found it a challenge to be seen as part of the client team. However, having done it for a long time it is possible to influence attitudes with compelling arguments based on how others achieve success.

THE IMPACT ON BUSINESSESA strong compelling argument is an economic one. Any high tech product or system that requires expensive training will not succeed. It’s now the norm that high tech consumer products have to work right out of the box. Take a look at the You Tube video of a 90 year old taking her iPad out of the box and getting on line without reference to any instructions in less than 2 minutes. Sales are directly affected by this type of endorsement. Watching a 3 year old wiping a conventional TV screen and being disappointed that the channels are not changing is a prime illustration of changing expectations. Look how far we’ve come – it was a novelty to be able to change channels from the armchair with a hand held remote control but it became a real user disaster as the level of complexity increased – numerous buttons with unreadable, abbreviated text. Touch screens on phones and tablets changed the game by introducing intuitive controls to expand and reduce image sizes, change pages and perform other functions. This has now been further developed with gesturing. So the ability of manage your home entertainment system by waving your arms around (Wii like) is already here.

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Technology is the enabler but as its sophistication increases so do consumer expectations. It’s naïve to ask people what they want when they don’t know what’s possible but equally once they see and use it they often describe it as obvious and wonder why it hasn’t been done before! Appreciating the difficulty of the challenge is of no interest to consumers.

Compare the experience of enlarging an image on an early digital camera using a variety of up/down, left/right buttons with the single expansion of the fingers on a touch screen. Once used you never want to go back. What was once a great tool is now too tedious to use!

DIFFERENT APPROACHESNow it’s a business imperative to deliver a great user experience, but how? Different corporations are tackling it in different ways. Some rely on a high degree of intuitive, design led pragmatism; some have a more iterative approach; and some adopt more systematic methods. In any event the way of achieving the result is less important than getting the right result. Here the business pressures come into play: time to market, budget constraints and competitor pressure.

The approach is often dependent on the sector too. High tech medical equipment has demanding regulatory requirements that must be satisfied before you think about delivering a great user experience. Then you also need to design a great user experience so that the user’s task is successfully accomplished. Compared with a new computer game, where the excitement and experience is the product, it’s not sensible to be over prescriptive. Suffice to say the pragmatists are usually very close to their consumers with an executive that promotes innovation and seeks to lead the market. They find it easier to make strong user centric decisions.

There are others like Philips, Samsung and Huawei, who have created user experience laboratories to thoroughly test ideas and concepts and to accumulate knowledge about their consumers so they can have greater confidence in predicting and influencing future needs. These new facilities are often managed by former industrial designers as they have the most appropriate skills to make the inevitable compromises necessary to bring a product or service to market.

After its surge of success in the last decade Apple has now been pegged back by Samsung. One has a highly pragmatic intuitive approach based on their knowledge and beliefs; the other is more evidence based with a systematic methodology. Both succeed! Interesting to note that the number of industrial designers in the two companies is very different, as is the number of products! Whereas they both might market their products, Apple seeks to own the whole experience from retail store to product content.

As I’ve described earlier the user experience spans the whole product life cycle, so it’s a continuous process of engagement and needs a cultural shift to move to a more people centric working environment. Purchasers don’t behave in rational ways and despite the systematic thinking on which science and technology is based, you need a much more creative, flexible and adaptable approach when designing experiences. People change and react according to the stimulus in front of them. Decision making processes have always been irrational and are usually based on how they feel – irritating as that might be. Creating and testing ideas and concepts at a very early stage is a good way to understand and modify your thinking as you seek to design the great experience – unless, of course, you have the complete confidence to be able to change behavior and create a brand new one. The alternative is exhaustive research to seek to define detailed requirements - only to find that by the time the analysis is complete attitudes have changed in our fast moving world.

Creating and testing ideas and concepts at a very early stage is a good way to understand and modify your thinking as you seek to design the great experience ...

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WHAT DOES SUCCESS LOOK LIKE?Fast failure is another cultural hurdle to overcome. To be successful means using tools and techniques that shorten and sharpen the decision making process. Old and trusted techniques such as cardboard mock-ups and quick foam models are still used by leading user experience design agencies. But the exploration of potential solutions can be further enhanced by introducing virtual simulation tools, allowing potential users to evaluate products without lengthy and costly prototype development. These tools not only build user acceptance and approval, but they can help identify those elements users most strongly value. Exploring ‘what if’ scenarios is not just sensible but essential in eliciting the insights that will provide the springboard for innovative thinking.

Dassault Systèmes has created all the tools that emulate the total product development process from creating a concept to testing it in a virtual retail or working setting. These tools go way beyond the traditional understanding of 3D CAD for developing engineering solutions and are designed to help and support the primary aims of new product development – to deliver an excellent product or service to the market that will delight its users, build a brand reputation, be priced competitively and generate revenue.

The ability to experiment, virtually, with a range of user experiences will become an established way of working. It won’t always be the primary method, but I believe it provides a significant business benefit in that a single database can be used across the company throughout the whole creation, design, development and manufacturing process. Not only can such a facility be used to help break down the departmental and cultural barriers that prevent effective user experience design, it could also be the vehicle to bring about the essential change needed to deal with our ever increasing demands for perfection.

Remember more people will tell you about a bad experience – make sure it’s not about your product or service.

Phil Gray MDesRCA, Managing Director, Quadro Design Limited, part of Sagentia Group

Visiting Professor New Product Design, Faculty of Science & Technology, Middlesex University

Director, British Design Innovation

Dassault Systèmes has created all the tools that emulate the total product development process from creating a concept to testing it in a virtual retail or working setting.

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