The Truth About User-Friendly Experiences
However beautiful your app's user interface (UI) can be, it means nothing until the user experience (UX) defines it.
Everyone has heard the term "user-friendly" to describe UIs. Some would even use the term "intuitive". Whatever flowery words are used, note that they are all subjective.
There is no single best UI design. Different people may have different ideas of what's appealing, what works and what meets their needs.
Consider the search form. A text box and a button. Simple right? However, in real-life enterprise applications, users would want to search by specific fields or combinations of them. They may need to search by specific keys, by date ranges, or by amount ranges, etc. With all the many possible fields in a module, the search form can be complicated. To an outsider, it may seem intimidating. For the users who asked for it, it best meets their needs.
Consider navigation. You can provide menus and tabs. You can group related content and provide sub-menus and sub-tabs, on and on, layering levels within levels and within levels of exposure. You know its gone haywire when you need to provide a search form to find a menu item (wink, wink Windows Settings and Office ribbon). Regardless, if it works, it works. It may be "ugly", but if it solves the problem, then it's user-friendly.
Some say that the true test is to let children discover how to use the UI. Children are the ultimate participants in UX testing. They have the most naturally honest opinion. If they can't do it, it's not intuitive. Period. It's something that my wife always says about iOS and its apps. Children can figure it out. It's that simple. Windows (specially Windows in phones)? Not really.
Beauty has nothing to do with user-friendliness. Eye-candies serve their purposes. In the end, what really matters is if things can get done.
Everyone has heard the term "user-friendly" to describe UIs. Some would even use the term "intuitive". Whatever flowery words are used, note that they are all subjective.
There is no single best UI design. Different people may have different ideas of what's appealing, what works and what meets their needs.
Consider the search form. A text box and a button. Simple right? However, in real-life enterprise applications, users would want to search by specific fields or combinations of them. They may need to search by specific keys, by date ranges, or by amount ranges, etc. With all the many possible fields in a module, the search form can be complicated. To an outsider, it may seem intimidating. For the users who asked for it, it best meets their needs.
Consider navigation. You can provide menus and tabs. You can group related content and provide sub-menus and sub-tabs, on and on, layering levels within levels and within levels of exposure. You know its gone haywire when you need to provide a search form to find a menu item (wink, wink Windows Settings and Office ribbon). Regardless, if it works, it works. It may be "ugly", but if it solves the problem, then it's user-friendly.
Some say that the true test is to let children discover how to use the UI. Children are the ultimate participants in UX testing. They have the most naturally honest opinion. If they can't do it, it's not intuitive. Period. It's something that my wife always says about iOS and its apps. Children can figure it out. It's that simple. Windows (specially Windows in phones)? Not really.
Beauty has nothing to do with user-friendliness. Eye-candies serve their purposes. In the end, what really matters is if things can get done.
Comments
Post a Comment