The user experience honeycomb
Adventures in UX — Part Four
In the beginning, there was Information Architecture (IA). In those dark times, a diagram of three intersecting rings (shown above) foretold that a balance needed to be struck between the objectives of business, the needs of users, and the display of content (first published in Information Architecture for the World Wide Web by Louis Rosenfeld & Peter Morville, 2002 edition — referred to, in the IA community, as ‘the polar bear book’ due to the animal on the cover). And yay, it was a good model. Except the diagram failed to explain to clients why particular decisions had been made. Likewise, it told them nothing about what they should keep in mind to aid their own analysis and deliberations. The days grew dark. When everything seemed lost, and the good forces of design prepared themselves for another bout of meetings, a ray of hope split the darkness. Peter Morville, UX pioneer, dressed as Gandalf for this analogy, stepped up to the intersected rings he himself had helped forge and struck them soundly with his brain (with a little help from his friends at qltd.com). The rings broke, shattering into seven easier to understand pieces. Together they are called The User Experience Honeycomb.
Ask yourself, is your product…?
Useful: Can your product achieve the user’s goal. Is this ticket machine able to promptly give me a ticket to the train I want to catch in a way which allows me to collect the ticket easily and efficiently, so as to reduce the time for those waiting to use the machine?
Usable: Is reaching the user’s goal, e.g. printing out a ticket, understandable and straight forward. How has the interface and information been arranged to guide the user’s journey to reach the desired outcome, outside of aesthetics.
Desirable: Does the user want to use the product to achieve their goal. Is it a nice thing to use? Does it feel good in the hand? To the touch? Is using it pleasing? Fonts? Colours? Sex appeal? The aesthetics.
Accessibility: Have you taken into consideration the needs of all users? Have you considered the needs of visually- or physically-impaired persons? Depending on the company you work for there will be different stresses placed on the need for accessibility design. Some companies may prioritise it, some may not. It’s good practice to include consideration for accessibility into your designs by default. In the end, the client has the final say over which features make the final cut. If they do someone out there may benefit from your work directly. Give yourself a hug — you’ve just made the world a tiny bit better.
Credible: Users must trust the product. Users must believe that when they reach the end of their user journey they will achieve their goal satisfactorily. Why? Because it reflects well on us, the proprietor company gets to strengthen their brand image, and it will bring those users back and back again. Conversely, a bad experience will create and enhance product aversion.
Findable: Content and controls need to be simple to locate and easy to use. If I can’t find it, I can’t use it. There is a diminishing window of time beginning at the point of initial interaction after which product aversion and user stress increase. If it takes me an hour to work out how to use a ticket machine you can bet your boots I won’t be using that machine ever again. I’d be pretty annoyed and stressed out! (Not only due to not understanding how to proceed but also because of my awareness of social pressure from those waiting behind me. This generates a sense of anxiety or frustration, leading to an aversion for the product). With the advancement of modern technology these interaction times are ever shrinking. Even a minute may be too long for some people to cope with. For example, one point of review for websites is how responsive they are. Page-load speed is a key component to this. Top web hosting companies advertise competitive page-load speeds from around 1.5-ish seconds to around the 300 millisecond mark (while we are on the subject of milliseconds have a look at this study by Google about website first impression speeds for some pretty mind-blowing stats). The faster a webpage loads the greater that feeling of crisp responsiveness. Websites displaying slow traits feel clunky and build stress. Why? Because the user’s desired goal is being impeded (and it is of a nature they as user are powerless to fix). This is why a large part of website optimisation is compressing down image sizes (or converting said images into alternative file types such as SVG, WEBP or GIF) to reduce page-load times as much as possible. Everyone is aiming for that all-important fast load. This is before any other interaction happens with the content of the website. Now imagine you have a confusing drop-down menu and navigating it causes new lists / components / pages to load and they all take an aeon to do so. That sites users are likely going to have a terrible experience. You may feel this time element is a bit shoehorned in here but I think it helps to demonstrate how all of these sections of The User Experience Honeycomb intermingle. Where’s the button? How does it work? Can I access it? How long does it take to work? What is the result?
Valuable: The value is the sum total of all of the above. Ultimately this will be a cherry pick and viewed through the eyes of your client.
I discovered the concepts and imagery shown above in this article written by Peter Morville. I’m a bit busy working on a few projects at the moment so that’s all I’ve got for you this time.
Hope it helps! Until next time folks.
