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User experience 2.0?

Fred Oliveira on December 7, 2005

Usability If there’s a time to invest on user experience, that time is now. With the abundance of companies and projects coming, left and right, into the “Web 2.0″ space - some already overlapping in feature-set and problems they’re solving -, there has to be something that gives a company the edge over competition. That would be user experience.

User first, business later

“Holy smacks, Batman!”, he said business later? Well, yes - you don’t have a business until you have the customer base, and there’s no customer base without proper caring about your visitors. The reason why User Experience (from here-on, UX) is so important is because users want to be the center of your attention. User-centered design (which if you’re a regular here you’ve been hearing me preach about frequently) is the most important asset your project can invest on right now.

Okay, why?

Users have little time on their hands. That’s why there’s news aggregators and we’re beyond clicking bookmarks and browsing sites for news. That’s why there’s search and not content directories. That’s why there’s projects being successful, and projects failing.

Users don’t want to have to guess how your website or web-app works. They want to look at it and understand it - all this under the time it takes you to snap your finger twice. If they don’t get it instantly, they’ll just move on to the next website or web-app, and your oportunity - your first impression -, is lost (maybe forever).

Proper user experience is your 2nd best asset, because users should be your first. Proper investment on it will give your project a new set of wheels. Go think like a user.


Comments on this post

Ernesto

Competition today is so technologically-centered. It gets to the point where lots of people’s products and services overlap in features, but they also overlap in illed user interfaces. Competition should be more user-centered.

I know lots of traditional web interfaces (pages refreshing all the time) that are more user-centered than modern AJAXed applications. AJAX is a tool, a means to an end, not an end in itself.

As a computer professional, I tend to find out how something works, no matter if it gets a little bit hard. But I agree that most users (particularly those not so proficient in computer stuff) won’t give a second chance.

Chris Peters

Hey Fred, great point. This idea parallels a book by Kelly Mooney called The Ten Demandments. It basically talks about how hard you have to work behind the scenes to create a great experience for your customers (which can be translated into users). I find that my most successful products are those where I put in the extra work to get them working just the way users want.

Ville Raitio

Web 2.0 is all about usability, user friendliness (whatever that is) and easy access to any content. Business solutions always follow the creative solutions and our beautyful, evergrowing web continues to evolve.

marc & jean: strategy

WeBreakStuff ยป User experience 2.0?

Federico Oliveira talks about how quick users’ attention spans are. we need to pay a lot of attention to this.

Something to say?