Nowadays, there are various competing products on the market. With the customers having many choices available, there are only a few ways to set your product apart. One of them is to provide a great user experience. Customers love it when they don’t have to struggle with the product to get it to work. This focus on improved user experience means that you have to make your product with that in mind. Here are some pointers on how to make that happen for you.
Be Familiar With Your Customer Base
Different people use different products. They might have gone to other schools or experienced things that others did not. If you want your users to have an easy time, you have to think about the sort of person who will use your product. For example, experienced medical device designers must think about whether the product they are making is for professional use by trained experts or by laypeople who don’t have any specialized training. This will influence what sort of information the device should display and what options should be available to them.
Listen to Feedback
To better adapt to your customer base, it is always a good idea to listen to feedback. When developing your product, you will be testing it extensively. While your focus should be on getting it to work, you should also have people from your potential customer demographic use the prototype. Besides providing you with testing for functionality, it will also showcase how people will use your product in the field. Ask the testers questions about how they feel using the product and whether it was easy for them. If they found it difficult, you may need to do make some changes with your interface and operations.
Focus on Simplicity
Simplicity is key to providing great user experience. This is very important when you are writing a user manual for your product. While your product might be sophisticated or have a wide variety of features, the manual should still be understandable to new users. Besides the manual, simple operations should be the foundation of how to use the product. For example, if it takes multiple button presses to get something to work, then your product will likely be unpopular with its users.
Simplicity also translates to the addition of features. Many people think that more features mean that a product is better. But it only makes things difficult. It is better to have a minimum amount of features but to do them well. Only add a feature if it is offers something unique or different from the other products on the market. If you are not sure about whether you should add a feature, then it is better to keep it out.
Remember Short Attention Spans
The average human attention span is now eight seconds. This is the amount of time that a person can focus on a product before they become distracted. That is a very short amount of time for you to convey information in your user interface. This is where functional minimalism comes in. You get rid of everything unnecessary and have only the essentials on display. For example, when you design a control interface, you do not have to fill it up with multiple buttons. Your product has essential functions so those should be the only ones you need to have. The classic iPod is a good example of this.
Get a Team Working on It
Having a single person working on your user experience is very limiting. With a single vision, your product might be a good experience for that individual but it won’t for others. This makes it necessary for multiple viewpoints in your design process. Your product should have input from multiple individuals so get a team together when you are developing your product.
Don’t Try to Design a Finished Product at Once
It might be imperative to get your product out but you should not hurry things. Designing a product is a process. Focus on one part of the product first then move on to the next. This ensures that the result has all the bugs worked out and should allow for easy use. For example, when you design a portable video player, you might want to ensure that it can play a video first before trying to make it portable.
Providing customers with a great experience ensures that they are happy with their purchase. If they are happy, then there is a higher chance that they will buy your future products or recommend your current ones. This makes a focus on the customer experience a good investment.
