Our friends over at Human Factors International posted a great video illustration of the biggest meltdowns experienced by designers, usability professionals, and user researchers. They did a great job of illustrating each point:
The points Eric Schaffer illustrates in this video have one overarching theme that is very dear to our hearts — it's about the people, not feature lists. Let's go over each takeaway in a bit more detail:
- People crave physically efficient designs. It's not enough for designs to look pretty. They have to be intuitive and efficient to use. As we mentioned before — one tiny usability problem can cause 20 hours in frustration and 4 laptop batteries.
- Great design is based on great user research. Thorough user research is at the center of great designs. Our friend Nate Bolt gave an amazing soapbox talk about user research and how to conduct it. Feel free to check out the slides and listen to the podcast.
- Understand the local ecosystem of the people you're designing for. It's not enough to know your target market. You've got to delve deep into the details of their habits and their culture. Are your customers elephants? Rabbits? Deer?
- Pay attention to standards, these are the way people expect most products to work. When we say standards, this goes beyond just HTML standards. Standards also have to do with whether the desired controls can be perceived and the desired actions can be discovered.
- Great products are not just about hiring great designers, it's a much more holistic approach. The term 'user experience' is a ridiculous term many people hide under. The reality is that it's a very large umbrella, which has many practices underneath: user research, interaction design, design strategists, usability, and many others. You cannot simply hire designers and expect to build amazing products. Great products come from people who think holistically about the problem at hand.