So, we all know what a good and bad user experience feel like, and we can think of lots of words that can be applied to both those situations. System or an experience can be helpful. It can be easy to learn. It can be attractive. It can be fun, or it can be stressful, and ugly, and condescending, and tedious and frustrating. So, how do we keep all of this in mind when we're designing. How do we focus our design so that we make sure we're avoiding those qualities that we don't want and moving towards the qualities that we do want. Well, Frank Guo, writing for UXmatters in 2012, offered this simplified way of looking at user experience that I think is really useful. He suggested, we could break down user experience into four major components: its value, usability, adaptability and desirability. So, when we talk about value, we're asking, is this system or is this design useful for people? Does it accomplish what they need it to accomplish? And is it better than the alternatives? So, as an example, we can think of VisiCalc, which was developed in the late 70s and was the first software spreadsheet that was used by lots and lots of people, and it was an enormous success because it allowed people to do something that they simply couldn't do before, which was to be able to update a whole network of different formulas and see the results immediately. So, it allowed people to rapidly explore different financial calculations and so forth, in a way that simply wasn't possible before. So, it delivered enormous value for people that needed to do these kinds of calculations, and it was vastly superior than anything else that was out there. By modern standards, it wasn't necessarily a huge usability success. In fact, when competitors came along a few years later, like Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Excel, they eventually wiped out the market for VisiCalc because they were able to offer superior usability and other qualities that were superior. However, because VisiCalc initially offered functionality that didn't exist, it was able to be incredibly successful. When we talk about usability, we're asking, can users do what they need to do? So, assuming we have the value right, are people able to actually realize that value? An example of a product that got this wrong was the Motorola Rokr, which came out in the early 2000s, 2004 I believe. It was actually several years before the iPhone, but it was the first phone that integrated or attempted to integrate mp3 playing functionality, and it actually connected to the iTunes store that was run by Apple. However, its usability by all accounts was awful. People couldn't figure out how to use it. They couldn't figure out how to access the music playing functionality, and it had other strange limitations, like only being able to show the first 100 songs that you had stored on the phone even though there were other songs that were on there, perhaps thousands of other songs. As a result, even though the value was there, this was something that there was definitely a consumer need for as demonstrated by the iPhone a few years later. The usability prevented this from being a success and the product ultimately failed. Desirability refers to the extent to which a system is fun, attractive and pleasant to use. So, sticking with a similar example to the Rokr. The iPod, when it came out in the early 2000s, was an enormous success. When the iPad came out, it offered a striking new design that a lot of people just loved and found really fun and engaging to use. In particular, the scroll wheel was a whole new way of interacting with a device like this, and people really found it to be intuitive, and elegant, and an enjoyable way of interacting with this device and that contributed to the success; and finally, adoptability refers to how easy it is to find and start using a system or a device, and to illustrate this, I'll show an example of a service that offers a very, very nice initial use experience. So, this is the website for Duolingo, which is a service for learning a new language, and this is the screen that you see the first time you come to Duolingo and you haven't ever used it before. So, very clear instructions. We get started, and the first thing it asks is, "What language do I want to use?" Well, let's say, I want to learn French. It then asks me, "How serious I am about it?" So, I don't really know. I'll just say I'm regular. So, next it asks me, "Am I new to French or if I already know some French?" Let's say I'm new to French, and I'm immediately starting to learn French. It asks me to select the translation of the woman and I start to engage in the learning process. So, you'll notice, it didn't ask me to create a username, or a password, or enter my credit card, or any of those other things. It just got me right into the system and allowed me to start using it. As I go forward, at some point, it does ask me if I want to create a profile, so I can save my progress and things like that, but it succeeds on the adoptability criteria by making it very easy for me to get in and get started without having to go through a lot of other stuff. That's actually not interesting to me. The basic methods that we use in user experience research and design are aimed at helping us address all of these attributes of user experience. So, the methods that we use for understanding users, for designing and prototyping systems, and evaluating designs can be applied to questions around the value, usability, adaptability and desirability of a system. So, for example, if we think about user experience research and think about two main types of user experience research activities that we typically perform: activities around understanding users, and activities around evaluating designs. So, when we're asking questions about the value to users, in the understanding phase, we ask, what is it that users need? What does our system need to provide for them? And when we're evaluating, we ask, does this design fulfill the needs that we understand? When asking about usability, in the understanding phase, we need to understand how did they do it now? How do they accomplish the tasks that our system is going to support in their current lives and using their current systems? Once we're evaluating designs that we've produced, we ask, can they get it done? Can they do those tasks with this system that we've designed? When looking at desirability in the understanding phase, we need to understand, what do our users desire? What do they look for? What are their turn ons and what are their turn offs? And when we're evaluating designs, we can ask, is this design appealing? Does it have those qualities of being fun, and delightful, and elegant that we associate with desirability? And finally, when looking at adoptability, when we're understanding users in the initial phases, we can ask, where do users look for things? And how do they make sense of things when they first start to use them? And when we're evaluating our designs, we can ask, can users find and access the system based on how we're planning to provide it to them? The iterative design process that's at the heart of user experience research and design is your guide for making sure that these different components of user experience are realized in the product that you're designing. So, to wrap up, user experience is multifaceted. Is not just about one of these things. It's not just about usability, or elegance, or desirability. The basic UX methods that we are covering in this course and in other courses can address these different UX concerns, and most importantly let the process be your guide. It's not something that you can get right right out of the box, but you need to follow an iterative process, asking questions all along the way to make sure that at the end you come out with a product that delivers a great user experience.
