As a UX Designer, I face an impossible catch-22 on a daily basis. On one hand, I have an obligation to my stakeholders and clients to create digital experiences that actually, genuinely work, while on the other hand, they're almost always looking for something unique and disruptive that gives them a competitive edge.
Every time I craft a proposal, I commit myself to the delivery of a piece of work that will generate more revenue, attract more targeted traffic or increase social engagement with a brand. All of these things are now easily measurable and UX designers are now just as accountable for the impact of their design decisions as any conventional architect or engineer.
The commercial value of design is no longer shrouded in mystery. It is no longer a black art, understood only by a handful of digital wizards. Everything I do, I do for a reason, and my design decisions are based on a careful balance of research, experience, real-world evidence and a dash of educated assumption.
On the other hand, what makes me attractive to my potential clients is something very different. Most people require effective design in order to deliver a return that justifies the risk, but what they desire is something entirely different; something innovative.
And herein lies the conflict.
To design something that consumers can use so easily that it feels natural to them (thereby removing any barriers to conversion or engagement) means engineering something that is inherently easy to use; something intuitive.
But what does intuitive mean?
The late Jeff Raskin defined the word beautifully in his 1994 paper Intuitive Equals Familiar…
Intuitive [equals] readily transferred, existing skills ~ Jeff Raskin
For those who can't be bothered to read the whole paper (and I recommend you make the effort), Raskin defines intuitive as the ability to use an interface without having to learn anything new. Familiarity creates intuition, enabling an end-user to immediately adopt an interface without further research or training.
But innovation, by its very definition, demands the creation of something new and experimental. If that's the case, how on Earth do we innovate in intuitive UX design? How do we create an interface that is both unconventional and familiar, all at the same time?
When put like that, it sounds like an oxymoron and I'm sure there are many user experience designers who are happy to hide behind it as justification for sticking within their comfort zone. But you only have to look at some of the big innovators in technology today to see how this can be achieved.
Until recently, the conventional means of interacting with a mobile phone was via a keypad and joystick of some description. This was the case for almost a decade (maybe longer - mobile historians, please correct me) until Apple released the iPhone in 2007, changing the face of interaction design forever.
With the iPhone, Apple had created a truly ground-breaking user interface, while making it more intuitive than ever before, by rejecting current mobile conventions; instead mimicking the way we interact with real-life objects - and I'm not just talking about skeuomorphism.
We naturally prod things, we pinch and squeeze them, and slide them around to reposition. We don't naturally do these things via a proxy, such as a mouse, joystick or keyboard. These input devices are relatively new to our consciousness, and have been adapted-to over a long period of time.
Multi-touch technology has allowed us to revert to a more direct interaction with the objects we see on screen, effectively removing technology (psychologically, at least) from the equation altogether, and putting the power back into our fingertips where it belongs.
So what can we learn from the iPhone?
The lesson I take from this is, that in order to innovate in the field of user experience design, without sacrificing effectiveness through a lack of intuition, we must first look at how our current understanding of the world has been constructed.
Only when we can separate truly intuitive behaviour (like manipulating things directly with our fingertips) from acquired constructs (like clicking on things with a mouse), can we begin to design interactive experiences that revolve around what makes us human.
And with the almost science-fiction-level advances in 3D tactile touchscreen and voice recognition technologies over the last few years, I feel like we're coming closer to that eutopia than ever.
