So, we came across something which we wanted to discuss on how bad user experience can cause some serious problems.
There’s this thing called a Norman Door. A man named Don Norman wrote a book called The Design of Everyday Things, and within this book, he spoke about doors and their signs of push and pull.
So think back to that time you were standing in front of a door, trying to push it open, when it in fact, was meant to be pulled. You know precisely the type of door I’m referring to. Chances are, you have experienced that humiliating moment of fighting to push open a door that should be pulled. This is the experience we are referring to when we speak about User Experience not going down well.
What Don says, there are two important things you need to know within design. The first is Discoverability, and the second is Feedback.
Referring to Discoverability is where someone has the ability to do something where feedback signals to something where an action has already occurred with the interaction of something.
These two points are applied to everything we do every day. Both are formed to become the standard where designers, including those in UX, base their work. This is called User-Centred Design.
What is User-Centred Design?
User-centred design is a form of interaction design. This is a process where designers use their knowledge and focus on their users, their needs and requirements throughout the phases of each step of the design process.
User experience is a form of user-centred design. Come on, it does have the “user” part in its name. User experience is intuitive design and made for people to expertly have the basic experience and knowledge for those simple to do daily tasks. Designers shouldn't Design things that work the way they want them to work, it should rather be how it all works for the user/customer.
Quick Realisation in User Experience
Here’s something that you might have thought about before. Have you ever, in your gut, felt something is wrong with an app you were downloading, or even visited a site that you thought was not working properly?
After you have then downloaded or visited the site, did you look at the app's or site's reviews, which then confirmed your suspicion? This suspicion is what is wrong with the design and the design process without thinking about the wider picture of it all.
This is where the problem lies. The designer will constantly be tapping into the ever-growing world of trying to understand the users; therefore, blaming the design is what many people do. This is where users are key.
How does Norman’s Door Affect UX Online?
Going back to Norman’s Door, the elements of the design give the wrong signals of usability and therefore to resolve this issue is to place signage to show the users what they need to do. Then without the signs, the users are then left wondering what to do with the door, either pushing or pulling - causing mass frustrations.
Remember not everything can be resolved by best practice, there are times that it needs to know who your customers are. This is just a standard and an intro to the wonderful and extensive world of user experience design.
Another form of bad user experience that we often see quite often on the same level as Norman’s Door is telling your users on websites what to do. Such as Click Here or Scroll Down to See More...these are forms of user experiences that mean it doesn't work. This is why Norman’s Door shouldn’t be applied to web design, if the user experience is not right and you have to tell them, then you do not fully understand your users.
How can you solve this problem?
We feel the solution is user testing. User testing will help you understand your users more on a deeper level allowing you to solve problems quickly and be ahead of the game of any redesign or reskin of your site.
Wanting to know more about user testing? Want to know how Blend Commerce does it? Do you want to know how it will help you grow your Shopify Store? Then have a read of our blog on user testing, what it’s involving and how Blend has achieved user testing for a number of our clients.
Let’s not have Norman’s Door get in your way of making your site convert better, leading from User Testing data, making you fully understand more of who your customers are, what they are doing and why. At Blend, helping you extend your knowledge of understanding your customers, is one of our ‘Whys’, which is making your Shopify store grow.
Bonus: Here is the video that we saw and wanted to share with you:
A note from our Brand & Creative Lead - Stephan Salt
Understanding users is one of many perfect examples of why data is highly needed. I love digging into this. There are many forms of how I creatively dig, for example places like Heatmaps, Google Analytics, my own best practice and User Testing. This is what I love knowing and sharing with our clients. Helping them understand what they need to know to make a wonderful experience on their site all from data that makes sense. Common sense (UX).
This is where I feel we at Blend Commerce differ from our competitors. Between our clients and us, we collectively identify new opportunities to win back control to fundamentally, deliver world class converting Shopify websites from real customer data driven user experience.
Are you looking for that agency who wants to make you grow and deliver your “world-class” solutions? Or just have a burning question to ask our award winning UX Team, then please Book a Call below to get the conversation going.
