Chicagoans are accustomed to winter with its cold, short days and snow. That’s why Experience Design Director Robert Sherron’s frosty metaphor for over-complicated UX design is a perfect fit for Windy City.
“Like a snowball rolling down a hill,” says Sherron, who works for LitePoint, a global experience company. “Features pile up over time and the product becomes more complex.”
As user interface designers discover new customer needs, they can add functionality to address those needs. However, without thoughtful rationalization and dedication to the overall development picture, software can become bloated and overly complex, confusing and overwhelming users.
To create the perfect snowball, the “thrower” must strategically add, remove, and mold snow into the optimal shape. Similarly, designers should pay attention to users and their teams to form the right functionality in the right place, rather than implementing ideas haphazardly. Sometimes simple is better.
Simplifying the user journey is not an easy skill to learn. It requires tempering ambition and creativity with long-term thinking and communication with customers and developers. .
Built In Chicago met with leaders of four technology companies to provide these examples.Original UX designer motorola, right point, Speed EHS When Millennium Trust Company We shared the processes we use to simplify the user experience and offered advice on avoiding overly complex designs. Each of these design teams uses thoughtful research, planning, and communication to deliver the best possible user experience for their customers.
Marisa Golliver
Head of UX Design
When do you think it’s time to simplify the product user journey?
Maintaining a close relationship with your users will tell you when it’s time to simplify. Evaluative user testing to solicit customer feedback, such as identifying key metrics that indicate drop-off rates or asking trainees to navigate the product journey to see how difficult it is is continuously expanding. This research allows us to better assess whether the path from A to B is unclear and to determine what lies between the user and the outcome they desire.
What process do you use to identify simplification opportunities?
Always question the status quo and go back to understanding your users first, considering the nature of their work and what they are trying to accomplish.
Given the importance of workflow within public safety, simply removing elements cannot simplify the user journey. Recent projects have shown that dispatchers need to open multiple tabs to find resources, create talk-her groups, manage geofences, and see location history. confirmed. This is inefficient when coordinating responses to emergencies. To enable these actions from one place, she suggested grouping them in one tab with an info panel. This allows the dispatcher to focus on the call rather than remembering which tab contains the information they are looking for.
Designers are often fascinated by possibilities. ”
What are some common pitfalls designers fall into that result in overly complicated user journeys?
Focuses on features rather than end-to-end user journeys. When considering redesigning a feature, the whole journey should be considered to avoid point solutions or workarounds.
Additionally, designers are often fascinated by the possibilities. As designers, we have to weigh what is possible and what is intentional. Finally, designers should ensure that the mental model that informs their information architecture is based on their target audience, not their assumptions. This is essential to ensure that your product is centered around your goals.
Robert Sheron
Experience Design Director
When do you think it’s time to simplify the product user journey?
Product simplification is a continuous process of research, prioritization, design, and evaluation to understand the underlying issues that affect the user journey. This is not one moment. As technology changes, new design patterns emerge, and new laws and regulations dictate how products are delivered, what was once a simple user experience can stand the test of time. I have. As products mature, they often tend to suffer from feature bloat. Organizations operate in silos, so often they don’t even realize it’s happening.
It is important to consider the type of product you are designing. Comparing desktop and mobile applications, the difference is simplicity. Desktop products can be diverse and feature-rich, but they can also be simple and easy to use, but a well-designed mobile application can do a few things (or one thing). ) very well.
So it’s always a good time to visit the product and user journey. Instill that mindset into your design group and organization.
What process do you use to identify simplification opportunities?
Rightpoint has partnered with leading office retailers to reimagine the Back to School (BTS) experience. For many students, parents and teachers, it is an exciting time. However, the joy of this moment is often diminished as purchasing items requested by teachers is often confusing, costly, and requires considerable time and visits to multiple stores.
Rightpoint uses a design thinking methodology and talks with 12+ stakeholders (in-store employees, parents, teachers) to understand what works in the BTS process and what can be changed or simplified We talked about what we need to do. Rightpoint also conducted a competitive assessment to identify and evaluate potential opportunities. Throughout this research, the focus came down to the school supplies list.
One of the design solutions was to provide school bundles that teachers create and share with parents and students. For those short on time, it offers the convenience of a one-stop shopping experience, while bundles can be customized and edited for price variations and more custom inclusions based on student preferences. , was also a step to empower students in this process.
It’s about designing the entire experience, not just the moment you touch it. ”
What are some common pitfalls designers fall into that result in overly complicated user journeys?
Designers often want to do their best to improve the user journey, but may not have established executive buy-in and support. Organizations are less likely to allocate budget to design initiatives if they do not perceive the initiative to be endorsed by senior management. Therefore, it is important to provide an action plan. Empower executives by defining goals and metrics for success.
As mentioned earlier, silos often exist within companies. Organizations are unaware of or compete with each other at the cost of complicating their products and processes. Invite different roles and organizations when approaching design solutions.
After the research is done, designers will have a long list of problems they want to work on, but solving them all at once is not the goal. Prioritize the most important issues. In some cases, it’s not the actual user interface of the product, but the underlying processes and systems behind the interface. Design the entire experience, not just the moment of touch. The experience users discover and learn about your product shapes their perception of your brand.
Shannon Harrison
Director, User Experience
When do you think it’s time to simplify the product user journey?
We listen and observe. As a designer, sometimes I see and feel friction in my work, but sometimes I don’t understand where it’s coming from or why it’s happening. We have a huge amount of in-house expertise and a passionate user community. We have a wide range of product solutions in our portfolio and rely on experts who know our software and the industries we support best. We consider our customers and everyone in our organization to be partners and part of our team.
What process do you use to identify simplification opportunities?
Your greatest asset in UX is your users. They tell us when we got it right and if we’re off track. When working with your team to design a feature, engage users early in the process and ask them to provide feedback on interactions and workflows. Ongoing user testing not only helps us evaluate what we’re working on, but also helps us gain insight into how it impacts the overall experience. This has been done with some work currently in UX Discovery. By leveraging user feedback early on, we were able to tweak the design before even a single pixel was coded. This is truly a win-win. We build what our customers want and need while saving on engineering costs by testing early to make sure our solutions are efficient and easy to use.
Our greatest asset is our users. They tell us when we’ve done it right and if we’re off track. ”
What are some common pitfalls designers fall into that result in overly complicated user journeys?
Focus on features your team may be working on right now without stepping back and assessing the big picture. It’s easy for designers to get drawn into the day-to-day operational aspects of being part of a Scrum team, but they must remember that one of the greatest values they bring to the table is the voice of their users. . It’s very important to always litmus test the work you’re doing so that the features and enhancements you add don’t complicate the overall experience you’re building.
Bill Varga
director, product design
When do you think it’s time to simplify the product user journey?
We start by observing how users engage with our product. These observations give us a better understanding of the issues users are experiencing as they navigate the end-to-end journey. We also review feedback from our client service team as they interact with large user segments on a daily basis and tend to understand the issues many users experience.
What process do you use to identify simplification opportunities?
After you understand the problem your users are having with your product, start the discovery phase. First, define who the user is. We may also research our competitors to see if they have solutions that are applicable to some of your problems. Next, we define the current content of the product and use fluent whiteboarding sessions with key members of the team (engineers, product owners, designers, etc.) to determine the essential content for the user’s journey. Then explore how users can easily navigate through your content.
I am currently working on a project to redesign the investor dashboard. The process started with a Zoom meeting that included brief interviews and observations using our current dashboard. We then looked at some of our competitors’ dashboards to see how they were addressing user issues. Next, we had a whiteboarding session to determine what content and features were important to our users. Finally, we did a quick research on how users can easily and easily navigate through important content.
Users are overwhelmed when everything is treated equally on the interface. ”
What are some common pitfalls designers fall into that result in overly complicated user journeys?
One common pitfall some designers can fall into is giving equal importance to every action a user might perform. Users are overwhelmed when everything is treated equally on the interface. Leading the discussion about what the most important actions are is essential for designers. That way they can understand them and design their interfaces with them in mind.
