Monday May 21, 2007
Sometimes User Experience is What You Don't Do.
Every design project I take on at Geniant starts off with the same question: What can I do to create a better user experience?
The answer to that question usually begins with a good deal of research. I’ll use the website or application. I’ll research competitors. I’ll brainstorm, strategize, study the brand and search for understanding of what can be done to improve upon the product or service. But, as we all well know, design is not always an additive activity. Doing can involve stripping things away.
CD Baby is, by far, my favorite online music store. I love to buy music there whenever I can. Interestingly enough, though, one of the reasons I love CD Baby is what they don’t do for me.
From the sidebar copy that appears during the checkout process:
We are VERY serious about your credit card security. We don’t store your credit card – not even for one second! As soon as you type it and click GO, it contacts your bank, authorizes the card, and tells us whether it’s approved or not. If approved, we mark it as paid, and that’s it! No card numbers stored in our system. Yes this means that when you come back you’ll have to re-type it. But in return you get the security of knowing that your card numbers aren’t stored in some stranger’s database.
Saving credit card information is a staple of e-commerce websites. Most of these sites wouldn’t think twice about whether or not to include this functionality, but these are exactly the kinds of things that fall upon designers to debate. We ingest information and design for end users. CD Baby takes kind of a bold stand on this functionality and delivers the reason for disabling it in a fresh and candid manner.
My point is not to prove or disprove the effectiveness of this particular design decision but to simply remind myself (and all of you, naturally) that sometimes the industry standard is wrong for what you’re doing. Sometimes that empty hole in your requirements document — the thing you can remove — is the thing that will make users happiest. And happiness is the best experience of all!
So ask yourself: “What can I not do today that will make end users happy?”
Comments on “Sometimes User Experience is What You Don't Do.”
EMC helps organizations create superior IT environments, from infrastructure solutions all the way up to software development and user experience design.
Learn more…About This 404er
Jared Christensen
Jared is a quiet fellow with strong opinions. As an all-round user experience designer, Jared makes sure that interfaces are human-friendly, emotive, aesthetically pleasing, clear, on-brand and usable – with a touch of mellow smoothness. He also fancies himself to be somewhat of a writer, but sadly he has little to say.
A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. – Antoine de Saint-Exupe’ry
Classic design advise, Jared. Great example.
“What can I not do today that will make end users happy?”
So if I do nothing today, does that make my users happy? I know my boss wouldn’t be :)
Jared, great example and a nice explanation. Its probably something almost all designers know, but I’ll be not many people sit down and actively think about what their product or app “isn’t going to do”, especially up front in the planning stages.
You’ve inspired me to be more cognizant of this concept in future projects.