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Facebook recently redesigned their user interface to the dissatisfaction of many users, including my colleague Sara Redin, who got lost in the redesign. Other recent significant and disturbing redesigns include Financial Times, Skype and Windows Live Messenger.
All these now have a ‘cooler’ looking user interface. However, I would argue that the actual user experience has not been improved. Quite to the contrary: I always feel insecure after redesigns, because things are not where they used to be. And if they are, they look different. I constantly find myself looking for a button or a menu tab that simply turns out not to be there any more.
My worst experience thus far was when Microsoft upgraded Internet Explorer to version 7. I never really acquainted myself with it and consequently stopped using it completely. It's not that the design is bad, it's just that it's so far from what I'm used to and it is too counter-intuitive for me to grasp.
Aligning the user interface design with the user experience is a classic challenge for designers and information architects alike, and it's never an easy task, as the examples above show. If you are looking for a good definition of user experience head over to Arpan Shah, who argues that all the following aspects should be included in the understanding of the term "user experience":
- Simplicity
- Familiarity, Accessibility & Visibility
- Performance
- Visual
- Basics
As a web manager it can even hard to get the user experience right, as you often don't have the expertise and experience in-house when it comes to designing for your users. What you do have is colleagues and bosses who always have an opinion to share. -Unfortunately they don't always share this before the relaunch. One way to meet this challenge is to involve the users in the redesign process. However, this approach has backsides too as Apple CEO Steve Jobs pointed out way back in 1998:
"[...] in the end, for something this complicated, it's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them. That's why a lot of people at Apple get paid a lot of money, because they're supposed to be on top of these things.”
What should you do as a web manager if you seem to have enough highly-paid colleagues, but nobody who is on top of user experience (like the folks at Apple)? You could look to some of the best examples of successful user experience such as Google which, in the words of personal technology expert and New York Times’ columnist David Pogue, is the most popular search engine because of its great user experience:
"[Google is most popular] Mostly because it’s better. Fast, good, idiot proof, uncluttered, ubiquitous. [...] people know the experience, it’s the same everywhere they go, there’s no risk. They use Google because they’ve always used Google." (from Beyond Search).
You could of course hire expensive creative consultants to run workshops, surveys, focus groups and so on. But you could also start on a much smaller scale by talking to other practitioners and hearing what they have done and importantly how they did it. It is cheaper to share knowledge than to buy it. You'll also get very far with continuous evaluations, adjustments and follow-ups. A common approach (mistake!) is to try and do everything (new system, IA, design, content and site governance) at once. Instead, consider dividing this into separate "bite-size" projects so that the very different disciplines don't get confused and get the attention they each require.
How do user experience and user interface design relate in your opinion? And how do you avoid that your redesign ruins the user experience?