The Buck Stops Here

Elyse Sanchez, Tuesday, June 20, 2006 @ 6:58 pm

Sometimes, it seems that the role of User Experience Architect is 90% management and 10% actual design.

And there's lots to manage:  user requirements, development schedules, business requirements, stakeholder expectations, schedules, timelines, and overall expectations. It's been frequently observed that the UXD is the liaison among all project participants. Truly, all roads to a given project lead through the focus of the user.

As a consequence, we mediators often become bargainers. I'm sure all of us have had to negotiate our design to conform with the myriad demands of the community of project stakeholders. We've given up the fight for a slick, appealing rich interaction for the sake of an overstressed timeline; have gone for the low-hanging, quick design hits in lieu of a more holistic and integrated design approach whose benefits may be more of an investment than an immediate showcase.

But some design recommendations are non-negotiable. Budget be spent, timelines be extended--we fail to justify our worth (and collaborate in our lack of ready acceptance) if we compromise on some critical practices.

Here are some of mine--I'm sure all of you can add to the list.

1. Coherent navigation:  An astronomical percentage rate of abandonment is associated with poor navigation on a website. This directly, and concretely, correlates to lost revenue on an e-commerce site, and only inversely impacts response rates on lead generation sites (i.e., improve the nav, improve the response rate). With applications, though, where users are often captive users, the erosion of usability is less direct, but nonetheless actual. It's almost a karma thing: what goes around (or fails to), comes around (or fails to).

2. Knee-jerk rebellion. As designers, we shouldn't adopt the personas of sulky fifteen-year-olds. Conventions endure for a reason. Especially on sites and apps. They cut through clutter and noise, and allow users to focus in on the heart of their tasks. Sure, we could all make our buttons into links, and links into drop-downs, and display diagonal navigation, but that's design that serves the designer--not the users. An electric light switch is dowdy and plain, but I can rely on what it will look like and what it will do, from sea to shining sea.

Of course, if I'm in Vienna or Tokyo or Rio, that switch is likely to look very different (although it serves the same function), which leads me to. . .

3. Xenophobia and the Ugly American Compulsion. Face it, we're good at thinking we set the standards for the world, and the statistics regarding internet usage bear out--at least for now--US influence and dominance. But that's changing--quickly. China will soon ascend as the country with the largest percentage of the population online. But it's not a simple case of "majority rules." Cultural differences are sometimes subtle, sometimes glaring, but always meaningful. In designing a website or application nowadays, it's best to assume global, rather than local, standards. This filters down to the smallest IA aspects, such as forms: most of the world doesn't conform to the US convention of <city>, <state>, <ZIP>.

user experience design

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