I present to you the translation of the article in two parts entitled " Can Experience be Designed? " By Oliver Reichenstein . Translated in the company UXDepot specifically for users of Habrahabr with the approval of the company Information Architects Inc. .

First, make a number from one to ten. And then take a step back and look at the phrase “Designing user experiences” as if you had never seen it before.





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Look carefully at these words until you hear in your head a magically beautiful voice that says them out loud: “DESIGNING THE USER'S IMPRESSIONS.” What do you think? Does all this seem like some kind of nonsense to you? No, I’m not talking about guessing a number or a step back, but about an idea. The idea that someone can control your feelings and sensations. Or would you easily agree that your impressions of reading this article were thought of by me as an author? Do you read this text in some special way? Or did you read and feel it the way I intended it?

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Impression and individuality

Since childhood, we used to think that our world view is unique and belongs only to us. The idea that our impressions were designed by someone strikes us to the depths of the soul and shatters the foundations of individuality and belief in individual freedom. This fear even makes many of us deny that, in principle, two people can have the same physical sensations.



Arguments about individuality and perception of the world usually end with children's phrases like “You don’t understand how much I love coffee, you’re not me,” or “You don’t know how I see red. Maybe for me red is what is yellow for you, ”or“ Or maybe for me the sounds of the piano and the trumpets sound the same. ”

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Pragmatic approach

Of course, with all this it is difficult to argue. However, the pragmatist will say: “Well, I don’t know for sure, but I have no reason to believe that everyone has their own world view, their own taste of coffee, the perception of red or the sound of the piano.” In fact, there is clear evidence that impressions can be intentionally caused:

• Rhetoric . Rhetoric is the art of using speech for persuasion. Rhetoric is a set of rules that allows you to convince other people. Rhetoric is the design of communication. And it works.
• Movies The language of films is a very difficult language, but with its help it is possible to make people cry and laugh, be afraid and rejoice. All these goals are achieved intentionally (and often achieved).
• Branding It is foolish to argue that all that you think about a particular brand is an impression that was designed in advance. Brands create communities of fans. Impressions from the brand do not differ from one person to another, they differ from one group to another. Brands are created using design. And the created impression is verified much more precisely than it may seem.

The impression can be created with the help of design. Any design is an impression creation.

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Mind control?

So, if different people can experience the same impression, does it mean that someone can control what we think and feel? Not. Not everyone will take your speech, your film and your product equally.



Joe plumber can hate Barack Obama no matter how beautiful he gives his speech, Aunt Rosa may not like Pulp Fiction, however much you try to explain the coolness of this film to her, and the designer, who works in O'Gilvi’s studio, never will buy Windows 7 no matter how cool its reviews and reviews are. You will not be able to control users with design, but with it you will be able to choose which audience you are referring to.



Designing user experiences is not a magic pill that can magically transform your product into something that everyone, without exception, will love at first sight. Not! This is what will help you more effectively reach your target audience. To do this, your product should be as clear as possible. The clearer your product, the greater the individuality in it, the more likely this or that group of consumers will accept or reject it. Therefore, you need to know your users and test your design on users.



By the way, when I asked you to make a number from one to ten at the beginning of the article, you probably made the number seven. If this is not the case, then I can congratulate you, you are really special ;-)

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Article continuation

Do designers design users' feelings, or do they design according to what users feel? There is a small, but very important difference, do you feel it? Not? Well, I will ask differently: what do architects create, design of houses or impressions of its residents?



The stupid answer would be "They design user experiences." The pragmatic answer is “They create the design of houses.” A tough answer would be “Architects create a design that leads to a whole range of impressions, some of which they foresaw, and some - not. They do not design all possible impressions that may arise from its tenants. ”



The perception of interfaces is very different from person to person. Yes, I created the design of this site ( http://www.informationarchitects.jp/en/ ), however, I don’t know how you perceive it now ( Translators ’note : here the author gives a link to the first part of the article that you have already read above :) ).

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Antiheroes

• Cheater He behaves just like any other scammer - fooling his clients with the slogan “designing user experiences”. Some scammers just give empty promises, someone sells blank pieces of paper instead of reports, others use this slogan to fill their senseless speeches. And there are those who just throw customers .
• Nonsense . Being nonsense does not mean lying, it means cunning in working purposes. A nonsense in the field of creating impressions looks entertaining - it arranges non-traditional rallies, esoteric brainstorming and irrelevant discussions for an absurd price with lots of foolish documentation (documentation is important, but the fact that it is printed on a printer and takes a lot of time does not mean that it should cost many thousands of dollars). Some erundists invite programmers and secretaries to the process of creating user interfaces, some call general directors to participate in some children's games, while others suggest you do absolutely fantastic garbage like eating soap while standing on your hands.
• Tyap-bloop managers . Uncertain managers like to test everything, because this approach helps them to avoid responsibility. The more insecure the manager, the more questions he has for other people. There is nothing wrong with usability testing, but asking your husbands, wives, children, secretaries, nephews, or themselves is simply not serious. Usability testing and user research should be conducted by professionals. Not everyone can be as cool as Steve Jobs, but a special project needs a clear vision, serious user research, an experienced designer and manager who is ready to take some risk.

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Controversy

• Meaninglessness : the phrase “designing user experiences” is a tautology . The design of any product means the interaction between the thing and the person. From this point of view, any design is the design of impressions, so the phrase “designing user impressions” does not have any special meaning.
• Exaggeration : the phrase “designing user experiences” is a hyperbole . “Designing user experiences”, as it were, implies that the designer controls the perception of any user and controls what impression the product produces on him. However, this is a great exaggeration. The more experienced you become in the field of design, the more you understand how much the perception of a product varies from person to person. Design defines perception, but does not control it. Thus, to say “designing user experiences” means to make a promise that cannot be kept.
• Philosophically speaking : the phrase “designing user experiences” is a synecdoche . The user experience of interacting with the product does not begin with the first contact with him and does not end there. Such interaction includes all points of contact : business, technology and design. Experienced designers use the term “designing user experiences” instead of the term “web design” to express that visual design is a superficial part of much more complex things. In this sense, “designing user experiences” is the correct term.

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Reality

As we see, the term “designing user experience” is used not only by charlatans. But what are serious guys trying to say when they say “designing user experiences” instead of simple and clear “web design”?



Creating a user experience is not as easy as working in Dreamweaver.

Anyone who has created a website can call themselves a designer. However, to call yourself the creator of user experience means to verify your design against real users and every day consider a large number of opinions of different users. If you do not do this, then you are not a designer of impressions.



The ability to create an impression descends from heaven to earth:

Traditionally, the designer considers himself the King, to whom users pay a tax for the sparks of his great talent. In the field of creating impressions, the concept of a great and all-knowing designer is turned upside down. The user experience designer is trying to be short-circuited with as many different users as possible.



Custom impression design wins quantitatively:

Design based on user experience as part of the overall design can be measured by the number of clicks, time spent on the site, return on investment, the number of returns to the site and user reviews. The design of a user experience is an area where every opinion counts, it’s a design that seeks the perfect compromise instead of the ideal solution.

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If everyone is a user, are all also user experience designers?

Since all people are users, each person has his own point of view on what the product he uses should be. And many violently defend their opinions. But this does not mean that all users are designers. Ask for salt does not mean to become a cook. The user has only his personal opinion, and the designer operates on the opinions and points of view of many users, trying to find a compromise. A good compromise is not an arithmetic average, it is above all points of view, it is artificial (for example, we will have the courage to compromise between cowardice and recklessness).



In order to drive a car you do not need to be an engineer, but only an engineer can repair it. The user experience designer should know how everything works. For the user, all opinions are the same, for the designer - no . The designer collects feedback and tries to find a way to apply them. His personal point of view is based not only on his experience; like a scientist, he conducts research and experiments, operating with both theory and practice in equal measure. He does not trust his feelings, he tests his product on users. Of course, creating a design of interactive products for ten years will give you the experience and understanding of what will work and what will not. However, this should not make you forget about the need to test. Handling responses will make you a pro to create a user experience.



Susceptibility to other people's opinions will accelerate your learning and allow you to work better and more efficiently each time. Finding feedback is not that hard! The difficulty lies in how to work with them. Responses make complicated things even harder. And also beware - if you embody all the desires of users exactly as they want, then you get a real merry-go-round of Hell.

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Theory and practice

You cannot be an expert in design without practical experience. Creating websites and working with user feedback is what makes you a user experience designer. Sitting on social networks, the ability to speak beautifully, the prize of the best salesman and a collection of articles on usability will not make you a specialist . In order to become an expert in the design of interfaces, you need to create interfaces and parse responses about it (sometimes quite angry). A real Jedi enjoys even such strange things:

• Daily study of user behavior just for fun
• Conducting usability tests and interviews
• Testing and optimization of prototypes
• Correction of errors after reading the most angry responses
• Learning new business processes
• Daily study of new technologies

The larger the audience of your product, the stronger you should be. The redesign of the site T-Online, which we did 10 years ago, was a real hell - the German-speaking technical community just tore up the new design into pieces. Over time, you get used to the protests that inevitably arise after redesign. Apparently, the iA team was able to significantly improve the design (and the responses are no longer so angry). In any project there are many interesting opinions that can suggest how to improve the project.

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Conclusion

Yes, many studios will use technical language in order to charge up their services. Some straightforward, some more skillful. But you can’t, without looking at being an amateur, unmask the whole industry in which some of the most intelligent and worthy people in IT work with the hellish hammer.



Amateurs do not want to talk and understand their clients, they do not want to discuss the project with some kind of stupid users there, they want to do well and immediately , to change and improve the site as they like. Their philosophy: "Let's work until it works." They are cheap, but not for long - as a result, they often cannot cope well with the task. Because, to put it simply, without careful preparation and research of users' opinions, you will not be able to make the product really work for these users.

1. The design of a user experience is not a magic pill that will help you immediately realize how people see your design, this is an approach to design that takes into account the opinions of users and responses about the product at different stages.
2. The more experienced you become in testing user opinions, the better you understand what to do with conflicting responses (a response alone will not make a good design). Resistant from birth there are only a few.
3. The more testing experience you have, the easier it is to find the right compromise in your work.

PS from translators : I hope you enjoyed the article. We will be happy if you point us to errors in the translation so that we can correct them promptly. Write me in PM, please :)