Tension between these two disciplines is both natural and unavoidable. We need to “toe the line” between convention and innovation
Serving different masters
Good UX, if measured by task completion, adoption and retention, is best if the experience is conventional, conforms to a users mental model and is predictably ordinary. Delightful and engaging design however is novel, unique and ultimately, innovative. It is important to note that these adjectives are directly opposed to one another…perfect opposites in fact.
The kicker is, like anything in life, we need to find the right balance. There is no sense debating which is more important since going to far in either direction will lead to unmet needs in our products making us an easy target for market disruptors.
Emotional Design Framework to Tie Them Together
The best example of a firm striking a nice balance is the Nielsen/Norman group. This firms founders consisted of the blue chip masters of usability and design respectively. Through their collaboration the Emotional Design Framework was formed.
Level 1: Visceral Design
Visceral is a reference to the concept of “gut instinct”. It’s a subconscious level of reaction to certain experiences. The visceral experience is the one triggered by the first exposure to the experience. It’s immediate and often beyond our control. It is at this level that people unconsciously think “Hell yeah, I want some of that!” This is easily measured when we put a design in front of someone. If they don’t find it viscerally attractive they may never get to the behavioral level.
Level 2: Behavioral Design
Behavioral design is all about how it feels to use it. It is about performance and functionality and is unconcerned with how it looks. This is the most meaningful of level of design because it is how the product functions…it’s usability, however, to get to this level we have to pass through the visceral design test first. For example, if a car is ugly we don’t bother getting behind the wheel to enjoy the comfortable ride…it’s just how we are wired as humans. Before we can engage our users we need to entice them.
Level 3: Reflective Design
This level of design deals with association, familiarity and reputation, the brand experience if you will. This is influenced by knowledge, memories and self-image of the user of the product and completely depends on the individual. The product needs to mean something to the user. I like to think of this as what “super power” am I giving to the user. No one brags about task completion…what is the product empowering them to day that is only possible by wrangling the computational power of their device? If the product is to be something they LOVE, what we empower them to do should be SUPER.
What now?
Data guides but design leads
As we see from the three levels of design discussed earlier, we need to nail the first level of visceral design in order for someone to care enough to engage with a product. Most of the user research methods above do a great job of measuring the behavioral level…but unless we pass the visceral level it doesn’t matter. This is where designers are well trained and why I think visual design is more important then we give it credit for. If it is beautiful they will use it…and we do need to get usability right but first they need to want it!
“In the past 10 years, design-driven companies outperformed the Standard & Poor’s 500 — a stock market index of 500 large publicly traded companies — by 228%.”