UX Design Principles

Recently, d.trio has worked on a number of client projects with a strong user experience component. This work has acted as a reminder of how the laws of UX design tie into influencing customers’ brand preference. Here are a few principles of UX design that marketers should incorporate into their project planning and execution:

Consider the whole interaction a person has with a product, process, or service. UX design and strategy considers not only the end result but also the whole process to get to that result.

Warby Parker is a good example of a brand that considers the whole consumer interaction. Through a simple website, you can order frames to try on at home or you can try on virtually. Your postage is taken care of, you can get your Facebook friends advice on selected styles, and your finished glasses come to you in less than a week. The process is designed to be easy and valuable throughout.

You have to read between the lines. Consumers won’t always tell you why something seems difficult or undesirable. Marketers must glean insights from consumer interaction and synthesize that into noticeable process improvement.

Google has built their philosophy on understanding how to make things better for their users (without their users telling them to do so). They state in their last philosophic tenet “For example, when one of our engineers saw that search worked well for properly spelled words, he wondered about how it handled typos. That led him to create an intuitive and more helpful spell checker.”
http://www.google.com/about/company/philosophy/

Show. Don’t tell. To create the simplest user experience, it’s best to explain a desired consumer response through visuals and concepts your consumers are familiar with. This familiarity will help develop brand preference.

Infographics are helpful tools used to break down complex ideas and serve them up to viewers in terms they can easily process. A relevant example is this infographic talking about the specifics of the U.S. fiscal cliff (a topic many individuals don’t clearly understand).
http://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/markets/2012/infographic-fall-fiscal-cliff/

Though these are just a few ideas that come from UX design, they’re important principles to remember when marketing to consumers.

Sources:

http://rhjr.tumblr.com/post/25440289520/13-tenets-of-user-experience

http://mashable.com/2012/09/20/memory-user-experience/