This series explores the Laws of UX and investigates what they are and how they're applied today as Principles in Product, Engineering and Design. Are they guidelines that stand the test of time? Or rules that are made to be broken?
1. Simplicity based on user Mental models
Some of the most successful digital interfaces standardize their design and make sure they work very similarly to the most popular products out there.
Balance innovation with familiarity. While innovation is crucial, too much deviation from familiar patterns can confuse users. Find the right balance to introduce new solutions without alienating your audience.
2. CONSISTENCY
Understand how your product fits within the larger ecosystem. Consider interactions with other products, services, and the environment. To do this, you must conduct user research to establish some foundational artefacts for the company and product:
Competitor Analysis
Personas or Jobs-To-Be-Done
A Customer and/or a User Journey Map
Information architecture & UX flows to illustrate growth paths
Read tools and tips for links to frameworks that help you establish these artefacts with your team.
3. Information Architecture
This consists of understanding the user's journey, identifying the content required and the context behind the product.
In this case study for Spectrm, I collaborated with the CPO to identify which features or content were must haves for the platform. We did a card-sorting activity to determine the hierarchy and placement for each feature based on the business objective.
From there, I created color-coded categories and translated them into paths based on our user's mental models like and vision for product-led growth (PLG):
Status quo - Features that users would expect to have since our competitors have them as well ie. Dashboard offering solutions relevant to their chatbot campaigns.
Engagement - Features that provide users with performance insights that would increase active usage.
Acquisition - Collaboration or PLG features that focused on increasing traffic to solutions that we wanted to validate market fit.
Conversion - Touch points and paths that led the users to relevant subscription upgrades and add-ons.
4. ACCESSIBILITY
In addition to designing for different user types like a first-time user discovering your platform for the first time as well as the power user who returns often an wants a more automated system, you must also design the UI and UX to match the WCAG standards.
Inclusivity is more than just a buzzword or lip service – Products must also provide inclusive UI and UX to those with diverse abilities in order for it to be considered user-friendly.
This is particularly necessary in EdTech products since users tend to learn content in a variety of different ways. Plus, most educational institutions like universities need their product providers to provide a certificate authenticating that they've passed a certain level of compliance in order to justify the purchase and use of that EdTech product in their educational budget.
5. SCALABILITY
Consider future growth and changes as you design. Making your design scalable can save time, resources, and ensure consistency as your product evolves. Try to anticipate future trends and technologies that could impact your product.
Though related to the growth topic, scalability is not the same thing. This is more related to making sure that the UX and BE infrastructure is future-proof. Collaboration with Front-end and Back-end Engineers is key to ensuring that the user experience and codebase is resilient enough to introduce new features and visual changes without breaking the product.
6. Make it memorable
A visually-pleasing design creates a positive response in people’s brains and gives users the perception that the product actually works better and is trustworthy.
There are different ways to establish this level of trust through product design including but not limited to creating UX patterns in UI and animations, content minimalism, emotional and ethical design.
UX Patterns - Pattern recognition helps users understand how to navigate your product. Familiar UI or animations helps users anticipate what to expect when they click on certain elements, which minimizes fear and anxiety for user types who need to perform a critical task.
Content Minimalism - Only use necessary content to populate an interface. People do not read and they tend to rely on less cluttered interfaces to give them direction on what to do.
Emotional Design - To increase customer loyalty and growth, reward them with animated feedback after certain user engagement. This creates a delightful and memorable experience.
Ethical Design - By not pushing users into a pay wall, users will trust and engage with your product more. Users are becoming more resistant to deceptive patterns.