by Fraser Hamilton on May 23, 2009
Designing for people’s core needs, their long-term life goals and aspirations, creates lasting value. Professor Marc Hassenzahl in Germany, has done some great research into what makes great user experiences.
He defines three types of pleasure that products can give:
- Stimulation - personal growth, enriching your knowledge, and developing your skills.
- Identification - self-expression, a sense of belonging, recognition, and interacting with others.
- Evocation - memories and self-maintenance.
These are fundamental human needs. They go beyond the temporary interaction with a particular product. For example, browsing through the photos sent from a distant relative might keep you smiling long after you’ve left your computer.
Or consider the mobile phone. As Don Norman points out in his book, Emotional Design, the clunky interfaces on many mobiles create little emotional attachment - people seem happy to change their phones quite frequently.
But mobile phones result in huge Identification pleasures. SMS (text) messaging allows friends and family to interact quickly and without the ritual of longer, more formal conversations. Messages say, Hi I’m here, I was thinking of you, Here’s a joke, I just had a thought… It’s easy to take this informal communication for granted, but it’s essential for maintaining close relationships with our loved ones, recognsing them, and expressing oneself.
The experience of typing an SMS message might be clunky, inefficient and error-prone, but the pleasure it brings to people’s lives is enormous. When designing a system you should aim to tap into the above list of pleasures.
by Fraser Hamilton on May 7, 2009
Great products deliver long-term customer value: they help meet fundamental life goals and aspirations. They meet needs that go beyond interacting with the product itself.
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by Fraser Hamilton on April 23, 2009
The usability of a product influences both people’s emotional response to it (”Argh! This is so frustrating!”) and their longer-term attachment to it (”I love this site!”).
The ease with which users can achieve their goals is the most significant factor to consider when assessing the overall user experience.
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by Fraser Hamilton on April 15, 2009
People’s core motivations - their key aspirations and life goals - typically go beyond the interfaces you design.
A product that takes users closer to their life goals, not just their end goals, will make them fanatically loyal.
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by Fraser Hamilton on April 4, 2009
You probably own a few products that appeal emotionally - things that you really like: Your favourite watch, your always-with-you iPod, the video game that you can’t put down. Why do you like them so much?
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by Fraser Hamilton on March 27, 2009
Prioritising usability problems helps clients and developers allocate resources to redesign efforts. High-priority problems are more important to fix than low-priority ones. I’ve advised on 3 ways to prioritise usability problems before. But problem severity ratings are to some extent subjective – different evaluators will give different ratings. Here’s a way to validate the reliability of your ratings.
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by Fraser Hamilton on March 18, 2009
During and after using a product, say a mobile phone application, users reflect on its value to them. This determines whether they will use it again. They’re asking, “What’s this worth to me”? But what do we mean by value?
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by Fraser Hamilton on March 12, 2009
The design of user experiences is often talked about in terms of visual design, usability, branding, content, and so on. These are indeed features of interactive products that can lead to compelling user experiences. But they are not the user experience. They are the product.
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by Fraser Hamilton on March 5, 2009
Recruiting users can be a time consuming process. If you need 10 users, you might have to make between 100 and 200 calls. And where do you get lists of potential users from? It’s not surprising that many companies decide to outsource their recruitment.
I’m based in London and can recommend both Fieldworks and Saros. Whoever you use, here’s some tips for working with a recruitment agency for usability projects.
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by Fraser Hamilton on February 19, 2009
The satisfaction that users feel when using a product is a key element of usability. For some products - for example in the leisure sector - it’s often critical.
Give users a questionnaire to fill in at the end of a usability test session to measure satisfaction. I like the System Usability Scale (SUS) - research has shown that you require fewer users to get reliable results compared with other questionnaires.
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