HUMAN-CENTERED DESIGN

The human-centered design approach is all about communication, that's right, your Interface should use everyday language and the Snapchats of the world aside your interface should not require a steep learning curve or your users to be a member of the in crowd.

 

An interface should feel like a good friend, whom is always ready to help out at a moments notice.

 

BE HUMANS NOT A ROBOTS

93% of how humans communicate is non-verbal (55% body language and 38% tone of voice). Much in the way that what we say is only a small part of what we're communicating, text and imagery is only a small part of what your interface is communicating

- “Albert Mehrabian - Professor Emeritus of Psychology, UCLA”

In this way your interface needs to tick these three boxes:

  • Provide feedback to actions
  • Show direct manipulation queues
  • Display results of actions in an expected way

1) SHOW WHAT’S HAPPENING

The first usability heuristic principle by Jakob Nielsen states: keep your user informed about what is happening.

Users expect to get responses immediately. As we know this is not always possible. In cases where you cannot show immediate results or a skeleton load, try displaying an interesting (or odd) animation. Now we have all seen loading bars and spinners. Whilst you can make do with these, you should try to go beyond the simple and possibly give your user a smile. 

In my world of Smiles and Cry’s, think smiles and not hair pulling out finger tapping frustration.

2) CONTEXT IS KEY

With many different smart things being worn, carried and interacted with on screens of all sizes, it’s highly important to provide clear navigational divides between different pages. A user must understand where they are at all times and have a clear way of navigating back, undoing options and seeing all stages of progression.

3) STATE CHANGES SHOULD BE CLEAR TO ALL

You often need to change out buttons and states on your site or application as a user interacts with it. Simply replacing a button or line of text can easily be missed by a user. That said there is no need to go overboard and show big pop-up notifications for minor changes. A small animation will/can attract the eyes of a user guiding them to that piece of important information or state change.

4) MOVEMENT /ACTION

Micro-interactions must help users understand/how to engage with an interface no matter how uncommon or unfamiliar the interface is. Apart from helping a user effectively interact with an application, micro-interactions have the power to encourage users to keep on browsing, like, or share content. Basically they are a key part in convincing users to take the next step.

5) INPUT PROGRESSION

Form completion (Data input) is one of the most important elements of any application or site.  Forms are pretty boring and are only as effective as the information entered. 

  • Always guide your user (tell them upfront) how many steps involved in the form,
  • Make every field feel like progress in completing the task
  • Give constant updates to the user as they progress so they don't get to the end of the form and find they made an error 20 questions ago. 
  • Make the input type clear (give examples of what input is required) 
  • On particularly long forms it may help to cheer your user on at steps throughout the form. 
  • Of course never ever have an input field that is not absolutely required, we've all seen results of how much drop-off is caused by every additional field

For more on forms see Getting Forms Completed

6) TUTORIALS

With a new site or update to your application be sure to inform your users on the changes. The best way to do this is to train your users through the use of an example fly through (tutorial). 

A quick note here: always ensure your tutorials are annotated clearly, have an obvious forward and backwards progression and allow your user to skip or access the tutorial within a single action.

SUMMING IT UP

So, if you value the experience of your users, UX matters. How your users feel when using the product is key to adoption and creating advocates for your application or site. Even minor details deserve close attention. You should always aim for approachability and simplicity no matter the complexity of the logic behind the interface.