UX Corner Volume 2
“With great power comes great responsibility.” As UX superheroes, we must master three primary soft skills--curiosity, empathy, and critical thinking--to defend against bad design and inattention to user experience. We protect and advocate for users, especially when they are not present in meetings.
Many objects we encounter every day offer examples of a poor user experience that negatively impacts our interactions with them.
This bathroom lacks privacy. © house_monkey/reddit
These elevator buttons are unordered and confusing. © bryanad26/reddit
These labels are almost identical, but the products are different.
The carpet on the stairs and landing is identical, and the carpet is a busy pattern, creating a dangerous situation by masking depth perception. © mediagarden/imgur
Some of the examples above are funny; others dangerous. Can you identify examples of poor UX in the digital world? Here are a few:
- Using stock images to represent specific scenarios
- Employing Frequently Asked Questions pages instead of breaking content down into topics, or even better writing the answers in dedicated content pages
- Having a Resources page as a catch-all
- Writing a long user manual or having a workaround instead of intuitive actions
- Using “Click here” on call-to-action buttons or links
And there’s a cost associated with poorly designed products, services, or websites.
- $243 lost per customer from bad user experience
- $150 billion lost due to wasted development time
To avoid these pitfalls, start a conversation with your users and perform user research or usability testing. Confuse about where to begin? Chat with us.
Test Your knowledge on how much you know about readability and navigation mechanism.