Building great User Experiences

Coming from a web design background we all know that usability is an important factor for the user adoption of a website or web application. But I think, these issues should nowadays be rather hygiene factors and good businesses should focus on the overall user experience, since this is what gets people talking and what multiplies success. But let’s take a look at the usability first.

Components of Designing Usability

Usability Design spans several dimensions we want browse though briefly, which are: taxonomy, interaction design, visual design, user feedback and content.

Taxonomy: focuses on the consistent classification of content, navigation and user orientation. Does the user know where she is at all times? Does she have ways to navigate to different areas of the website and is it clear by which clicks the user can complete a task (e.g. find something)?

Interaction Design: takes care of a consistent use of UI patterns and site components and aims to minimize the learning curve and to increase accuracy and efficiency of a task. Good interaction design ensures an always comprehensible user interaction and reduces frustration on the side of the user.

Visual Design: is aimed at optimizing the visual communication between user and website (or website’s content). Visual design communicates the underlying site’s structure to the user, pointing out relevant information or interaction artifacts at the appropriate time in the process. On a more general basis this manifests in graphic design standards (aka. style guides) and branding guidelines for a website.

Content: reminds you that even if you have perfect navigation and high usability, it all doesn’t help, when there is no relevant content. And relevant means a) there is everything, users want (including help sections and support pages) and b) that the provided content does match the expectations and is helpful.