How to Ensure Smooth User Experience?
Let’s look at a real world example. I usually refrain from buying consumer products which I haven’t tried before and certainly don’t buy the ones which I haven’t even heard of, unless of-course I’m grocery shopping in a foreign country.
But one day I bought an alien product without even giving a second thought. Why would I do that? The answer lies in an experience which I had sometime earlier. Once a friend suggested me to try out a ready to drink milk by a local government brand instead of buying a regular milk that you need to boil before consuming, so I tried it and to my surprise it was good in taste as compared to other similar products. It was natural, cheap and healthy with no added preservatives and could be stored for 90 days without refrigeration! I was in love with that milk brand.
Now before we see how this is relevant for digital design and user experience, just bear with me another moment to conclude the impact of my above experience.
People make Decisions based on their Experiences
Another day I was looking for a fresh juice, but all I could find in the area was packaged juice from an alien brand. I was not going to buy it because of brand unawareness. But while I was staring at it, the shopkeeper said, “It’s a government brand product without any preservatives and artificial substances and it’s really good.”
Bang! I was instantly sold by this statement.
It was a government brand with no preservatives! The other one (milk) already proved to be the best in its class. Had I not tried the milk earlier, I would have not bought this juice. People bring their experiences along and they make decisions based on them, sometimes totally blind siding other factors.
Same applies to experiences on digital products.
People are so much more comfortable using interfaces and interactions similar to the ones they have used before. They are aware of the outcome and will not be surprised at the feedback. We can call it mapping digital to digital experience. The problem occurs when people come across elements which they have never experienced before and uncertainty arises. This is where the design fails or becomes successful.
When designers draw on real world experiences from real users, the success rate is much higher and this is the base of mapping non-digital experience to digital.
Introducing new design elements works best when they have been thoughtfully derived out of already existing behaviors. Material Design is the best example. Replicating the properties and behaviors associated with actual cards, layers, shadows, etc. perfectly onboards the mental models of people. I could have used an example of skeuomorphism but a lot of old time iOS users would not agree to that because of the experience they have had with skeuomorphic elements and then non-skeuomorphic elements for the exact same things. Ah! You see, it’s again because of the experience they have had.
Experience is the core of any product or service where designers should focus their attention on. Good or bad experience, both provides useful insights on mapping a user/customer’s experience journey.
