It’s not about the design...it’s about the user experience

Angela Schmeidel Randall is the Founder & CEO of NormalModes, a company that helps businesses increase revenues and reduce costs by simplifying their interactions with customers over the Internet. Angela is a guest contributor to Startup Houston.

Over lunch recently, a colleague confessed that her design team didn’t believe in user-centered design or usability testing for the websites they created. She elaborated that the team felt like they produced a superior product and that there was just something wrong with customers who couldn’t use it – they were computer illiterate, non-linear thinkers, or weren’t sophisticated enough to appreciate good design.

This team, it seemed, knew from all their years of training what good design was, and this knowledge was all any company really needed.  The team’s leaders had been designing for the web since 1996 and were skilled in Photoshop, Flash, CSS, XHTML, and all the other necessary tools. Figuring out what the customer wants and needs, in the customer’s own words, is simply a waste of time that could be spent on design and code.  After all, they’ve got a lot of work to do.

I was aghast.  Really? They said that…..out loud?

There is, of course, a certain measure of humility required for designers to open themselves to incorporating the user experience into the design process and to engage in usability testing.  For so many years the predominant culture in these groups was that web design was a “creative” art, and as in the manner of all true artistes, judgment of art best resided with the “experts.”

No more.  The old model is hubris gone amuck.  The new model is user-centered design that creates solid customer experiences.  Good experiences increase revenues, reduce operating costs, decrease development timelines, and create happy, loyal customers.  Everyone wins.  Who wouldn’t want to do this?

In the world of user-centered design, the experts are the customers – those people who use the product, or website, or process every day, becoming intimately familiar with the foibles and limitations of each design.  These people know your website, and what’s more they’re thrilled to tell you what’s wrong with it and how to make it better.  Embrace them.

Here’s how to start:

1. Categorize your customers into target audience groups. Are they computer literate?  How old are they?  How much money do they make? What education level have they attained? In most cases, you’ll wind up with a handful of target audiences. Identify why each audience is coming to your website, and prioritize them according to their value to your business. Then, figure out what you can do to meet the needs of each of the audiences according to their priority.
2. Ask your customers what works for them, watch them work through the process, and then ask follow up questions. It’s important that you not just talk to your users. Give them a common task, like purchasing something in your catalog, and watch the steps they take to complete it. My favorite part of usability studies is watching users contradict themselves by saying one thing, then doing another. That’s when we glean the most valuable information about our websites.  When you ask, watch, then follow up with some clarifying questions, you’re really getting to the underlying behavior of your users, and how they choose to adapt to suboptimal situations.
3. Test. Test again. Test some more. The most important thing about testing is that it allows you to quantify your results. Testing is often the only objective way to resolve internal debates over what enhancements will be most valuable to your customers and your bottom line. You need to learn to use a variety of tools like eye tracking, A-B testing, and heuristic evaluations, bearing in mind that each tool is used for different situations.  There is no one “right” tool, but a variety of tools some of which may be more or less appropriate for each situation. Cultivate a repertoire of reliable tools and use them on an ongoing basis.

It seems obvious now, but you can’t create a good user experience without involving the user. Consult these real experts about your website, and you’ll find they’re happy to share their experience.  You’ll both be thrilled with the results.