Many developers still get taught that making good software is all about writing good code. If we take a step back and translate the geek code, isn’t it more about enabling human beings to do useful things easily? Human-centered design is what makes Apple and Google the best.
UX Design takes a special person
One such person is Phil Barrett who is one of the executive design directors at Absa’s Africa Design Office. He grew up in the home computer revolution, played Dungeons and Dragons and wrote a few adventure games and graphics programmes. This inevitably led him to study Computer Science. However, when he discovered he was more interested in how people interacted with the computer, rather than the software itself, he decided against becoming a developer. His passion eventually led him to the leading British UX design agency Flow Interactive (now Foolproof). He brought the agency to Cape Town and then sold to Deloitte Digital in 2014.
Understanding how UX designers think
According to Phil, a UX designer by heart is a person passionate about making digital technology match the needs, behaviours, and motivations of people in real-world situations. They constantly ask themselves: Why do people do what they do? How are things organised? How do they feel as they use this product? How could we make it match the task better, so people can get the job done more easily and quickly?
Woolworths recently got the human-centered design concept spot on by adapting the way they label their spices. In the past spices were placed on kitchen shelves and consumers were able to identify the spice at eye-level. With the advent of spice racks in drawers, consumers now look down on their spices, which led their designers to write the name of the spice on the lid as well as on the front of the bottles. The result = happier customers.
According to Phil, UX designers have a very refined eye and care about the nuances of a user’s experience. Many people can’t articulate why they do or don’t like a digital product, but a good user experience designer can pinpoint tiny factors that matter – and make the changes needed to get customers to adopt and use a product happily.
Designing for customers
For Phil, UX is all about “understanding what customers really want, why they want it and then making things useful, reliable, easy, delightful, and persuasive”. It’s about creating a great experience overall and the experience needs to tick all the boxes. He uses the example of eating at a restaurant:
• Useful: Did the food contain nutrients that I as a human could consume to become stronger and have energy?
• Reliable: Is the food at this restaurant always ticking all the boxes or a hit and miss?
• Easy: Was ordering easy? Was the menu easy to understand? Was it possible to get the food into my mouth and chew and swallow it easily?
• Delightful: Does it taste incredible? Is the experience of eating at this restaurant memorable?
• Persuasive: Did the waiter make good recommendations? Does the menu explain the meals in an enticing way?
When customers enjoy an experience, they are likely to engage in it. For software companies, this translates into happy users that stick with their product. Good designers use a method called design thinking to help them achieve this goal.
Design thinking is a set of creative strategies for coming up with solutions to problems that people haven’t articulated before or haven’t found possible to solve, i.e. what does my customer want and why. “There’s that famous Einstein quote: ‘You can’t solve a problem with the same thinking that created it.’
Why UX matters
Phil concludes that you have to continually work on showing your customers that you love them, otherwise you can be sure that they won’t love you back. So, the level of human-centered thinking and design invested into your product becomes your unique selling proposition and ensures that your product is loved, consumed and adored by your customers who keep coming back for more.
He maintains that the most successful consumer-facing organisations in the world like Apple and Google have put human-centered design and customer centricity at the heart of what they do. That is, in Phil’s opinion, exactly what makes them so successful: The understanding of what humans choose to do and why they do it is at the heart of UX thinking but it’s really at the heart of successful business thinking. It can mean the difference between an organisation that fails and an organisation that thrives.
Creative Imagineering is a team of geeks who talk in code, but we also take UX seriously. We believe these elements have to find common ground to ensure your customers show your brand a lot of love and keep coming back for more. Email us. info@creativeimagineering.co.za
Original Article: www.offerzen.com