Creating A Valuable User Experience

By Kaylyn Bredon, Senior Interactive Designer/UX Specialist

The UX shift

It used to say a lot about your brand if you had any sort of web presence. But now, the world is changing. Today’s web content is infinite—everyone has a website, a subsequent mobile version and there are more apps than we will ever know what to do with. With all these choices, people are flocking to places that provide the best user experience, whether it's to places that make them feel good or to brands that provide them value.

At the South by Southwest festival this year, conversation around the user experience was at the forefront of many discussions. That's because, in the ad world, the campaigns and tools that are resonating the most, are all about the user. They meet the most basic needs, such as functionality working all the way up to delightfully surprising the user with unpretentious amusement.

For retailers, embracing the shift to making the user experience central (or the UX Shift) will result in: increased brand loyalty, repeat transactions, and deeper consumer insight that feeds future brand strategies.

Each level serves as a prerequisite for the next. Only upon working all the way up can you achieve the level of continuous user engagement.

Perhaps the best example is the web’s current golden child—Pinterest.

“Make something beautiful”

On the last day of the 2012 SXSW festival, I had my agenda starred knowing that Ben Silbermann, Pinterest Co-Founder, would be talking. As an avid pinner, I decided that this was a must-see session.

Ben’s goal in creating Pinterest was to “make something beautiful” that solved a need that people had a desire to overcome.

For him, it started with his love of collecting. He wanted to enrich his hobby by bringing it to the web.

When Ben created Pinterest, he crafted it with the user in mind. The quote I remember most from Ben’s SXSW presentation was “If you don't give them something that's worth their time, they shouldn't give you their time.”

The act of pinning is very fluid — collecting may be an offline activity that many people enjoy, but Pinterest allows them to curate their collections online, and then they can take projects, recipes or décor ideas and execute them offline again. The whole experience feels very natural and begins to tell a story about the individual.

Pinterest is a success because it fully embraces the shift towards creating valuable user experiences. Conceptually, Pinterest is just an expansion on one simple feature from Facebook, the news feed. By design, this photographic wall is effortless as it allows users to visually and emotionally feel the experience instead of having to think about it.

With infinite content—you must provide value

As Pinterest, and many other excellent sites, makes clear, the user experience must now be considered for every aspect of client outreach whether that is Facebook updates, banner advertisements, billboard advertisements, etc. So what can you do to optimize that experience?

Humanize – engage the users

Solve real-life problems, discover actual user needs and improve tasks that people struggle with every day. End products should not just amaze users with the technology; instead they should help the user accomplish tasks both successfully and easily.

For example, Target's and Starbucks’ adoption of mobile couponing within their apps is an attempt to eliminate the need to keep track of gift cards and paper coupons.

Brands need to remember, however, that for many projects there are many different types of users. In each project, various user patters must be considered. With Pinterest for example, the archetypes might include:

• Content Drivers/Trend Setters – Those who explore the web and external blogs looking for inspirational images to pull onto their boards;
• Re-Pinners – Those who strictly pinning existing photos from within the Pinterest community, and;
• Watchers – Those who do not create boards but just go on to look around or explore.

The experience must cater to all but confuse none. The solutions that Starbucks and Target have introduced follow an understanding of this model. Both brands provide real value to digitally minded shoppers without alienating traditional consumers.

Dare to revolutionize.

Marketing is moving at lightning speed, and we all continue building off one another which allows for quick innovation. At this rate of growth, we cannot constrain ourselves too strictly to timeworn brand standards. They should serve as a starting point, yet be flexible enough to accommodate different spaces that require adapted executions.

A company's brand attributes are its pillars. Its personality serves as the foundation. This allows the brand to evolve and grow.

Simplify in every way possible.

Focus on one thing and do it well. In advertising and marketing, more often than not less is more. Don’t ever compromise quality—instead narrow the scope.

Great examples of simplicity can be seen in some of the most popular apps talked about during SXSW this year.

• Highlight: Recommends people to talk to in your vicinity based on your interests.
• GroupMe: Allows mobile users to have group texts across multiple operating systems.
• Instagram: Facilitates the sharing of artistic photography.

None of these apps try to encompass a large amount of functionality. Instead, they choose one thing and do it efficiently. Retailers considering building or modifying apps should follow suit.

Design for mobility.

Keep in mind that users aren’t just sitting in their office in front of a computer anymore; they are constantly on the go. Think of how you can provide value as they continue on throughout their day.

Establish trust and reliability.

A strong design can get you a long way, but if it’s not easy to use or if the user gets frustrated, that all means nothing. The user’s expectations of how to interact with a design should be consistent with how it actually works.

Test and continue to improve.

No design is perfect. Get feedback often throughout the entire design process. Making fixes in the earlier phases is much cheaper than having to create a work-around once a project has been fully developed.

It doesn’t have to cost a lot to complete trial runs. Many times, this can be achieved with rapid iterative testing or remote usability testing with your target audience.

Balance business goals with user desires.

We have all seen it, a company becomes a little too self-serving which then leads to a large amount of user abandonment.

A good example of a company that seems to be keeping this balance is Facebook. With the release of their new brand pages, they have restricted brands from pushing promotions too much on their wall. Instead marketers are asked to tuck it into the tabs or allocated ad spaces. This allows the essence of Facebook, growing and maintaining relationships, to remain pure. Such change can be frustrating for marketers, but if we are thinking from the user’s perspective, Facebook made the right call.

Own the evolution

Designers are the forefront of this change – we own the evolution. The shift has occurred and the marketers are no longer in the driver’s seat. It’s all about the end users.

With this degree of saturation, if brands don’t make the change focusing on the user experience, they will be left behind. Give them a reason to keep your brand in their lives.