This might sound strange, but sometimes I forget that products and websites can make people happy.
My work involves putting things through rigorous testing. Asking participants to complete tasks on the site that we know will be difficult for them to do. After testing, my analysis is constantly focused on the faults and errors and how to fix them.
On top of this, the things we test often do not help in bringing joy. Products that are in such an early stage of development that they are bound to have issues that frustrate users. Websites that have received so many complaints that their owners have been forced to seek our services.
All this means I forget that in the end, a good user experience is something that is exactly that; a good experience, just like a good meal or a Sunday sleep in.
This is not to say that we don’t see good sites coming through our doors. We often test products from designers who I think are top of the field, and whose work I admire to no end. It is just that due to the way we are usually contracted, we tend to test products early in their life cycle, when there are still issues to be addressed. We often don’t get to see the final experience of users sitting in front of the launched product.
Last week I was testing up in Sydney for a client who is developing a new product. This product had been tested and revised thoroughly already, and I was asked in to test some final features and give a new opinion on the user experience. The team working on the product had been refining and reshaping the interface continually in the weeks leading up to my testing, and had developed a product that offered users a unique, simple and enjoyable experience when using it.
During testing, participants’ responses to the product where wonderful. Session after session was filled with “This is excellent, I want one”, “I never thought I would be able to do this sort of thing normally, but this makes it so easy”. At the end of session, I had participants begging me for more details of when the product would be released.
This really reminded me of what is at the heart of what we do. Whilst it is important to always be ironing out the issues, the final goal is not to create a product that simply does not frustrate users but to create a product that wows and excites users. What you are making should enhance user’s lives, even if only by a little bit. As a researcher rather than a designer, it is often easy to forget that we are aiming for designs that give joy from the experience, and that a succesful product is one that people can not only use, but want to use.
I’m glad that I was reminded of this. It is important to remember how high we should set the bar, and that we should always be aiming for perfection. It also reminded me that whilst it may seem like so many of the products I test may seem troublesome and problematic, it is often because they are so early in their lifecycle that they have not reached their full potential yet, and that testing and redevelopment can achieve a product that makes users desire it rather than accept it.