This is what I have learned about user experience.
Many of you know User experience is the most important thing in front-end development. It doesn’t matter how good your app is if the experience of the user is bad.
You could have the best solution for a problem on the market but if people find it stressful to use your product they are not going to come back ever again, cause we humans want to solve our problems in the least painful way.
Cognitive Limitations
The best way to approach this is by knowing that we humans can only pay attention to so many things.
That means the more information is on the screen the harder it is for us to make a decision.
If you think about it when you are looking for something on the internet and open a website that looks confusing because of too much information you just go back onto the search engine to select other options.
When we look at a website/app we don’t read everything, we “Scan”. We look through the screen for something of interest. If we don’t see what we are looking for we just go to the next page.
All that I want is what I need right now.
As the title says, when we are looking for something, we want it now, quick, easy and painless. Humans are always looking to solve their problems with the least amount of effort possible, not because we are lazy but because we are designed to be as effective as possible.
So, at the moment of designing an interface, we have to make it easy for them, make the solution to their pain obvious. That’s why you have to make sure that everything that you want your potential clients to click on looks clickable. It has to look different, you need to apply contrast in the best way possible so it seems like if I clicking that button will solve my problem.
Many times people look for things that may not be the best solution to their problems. So, they need guidance, you have to tell them the way to take on the App/Website.
People make mistakes
People tend to make mistakes and that’s not gonna change any time soon. We need to help as much to prevent those mistakes from happening.
For example:
When something makes a dramatic change you have to make them confirm it (saying something like, are you sure you want to do this?) like deleting something important.
Whenever there is an option to do something irreversible make them confirm it, let them know what they are about to do. Make it clear and easy to understand, simplify everything as much as you can, so the next action is obvious.
Make everything easy to undo, people change their minds. Making everything undoable will give the user peace o mind by knowing that they can undo anything in case they needed to.
Another important thing to consider is, in case something goes wrong you have to let them know. They want to know what happened, why and how to fix it. Is there something they have to do to solve the problem? tell them how and why they need to do that.
If they make an error and you can fix it, do so and tell them how you did.
If you can save them time by fixing the problem for them that will be something they will be thankful about.
Human memory is complicated
People reconstruct memories, which means they are always changing, people will never remember things exactly as they happened. That’s why you have to follow patterns that are already the norm.
It’s better to observe what people do than ask them what they do or what they like. Very often people don’t even know what they want. Actions are much more valuable than words, so pay attention to that.
People’s memory is fragile, it degrades quickly and is subject to lots of errors. So whenever you are designing an interface and you get the opportunity to make something simpler and easier to understand, do it.
Try to never make people remember things from one task to another or one page to another. People can only remember 3 to 4 things at a time. So limit the information that you want them to remember as much as you can.
Another thing that you may know is that people like to be social. If you pay attention we are always looking for people for guidance. That’s why the “How to” videos are so popular on YouTube. Because we are looking to see how other people do stuff that we want to do ourselves.
We create mental models
People have specific ideas and expectations for almost everything, we are always relating things. Which means that we have visual systems that we acquired in our lifetime. If we see things together we think they are related, things that are the same color seem related. That’s why we have “Color Schemes“, to organize things, relate, differentiate and highlight elements on the interface.
“Please, never use red and blue together, they are the hardest colors to look at together”.
This is the first part of the blog, I’ll be posting another blog very soon, and when it’s ready I’ll link the post down here.