Practitioners-Guide-User-Experience-Design

PRIVILEGE THE USER’S GOALS
Looking back to my experiences at the Journal, one of the most important things I learned
was not to get in the way of my user’s goal. The pull I felt to introduce new features was
particularly strong in regard to my desire to harness the capabilities of the iPad’s touch
interface. I wanted to perfect our gesture-based navigation and get rid of our clunky
buttons.
The app was made up of a mix of natural user interface (NUI) elements and graphical
user interface (GUI) ones. Users could move between sections of the app by swiping
down, which was a fairly close approximation of the natural movement of reading a
physical newspaper, reading top to bottom down the columns. But they could also choose
to navigate with a graphical interface, which was a button on the bottom of the app labeled
“Sections” that, when tapped, would give users a menu. I was designing for a touch
interface, so I figured we should be redesigning substantially to embrace that—I wanted to
do away with the buttons. But I was told to avoid introducing new types of interactions
and stick to familiar, persistent on-screen interface elements.
My boss’s position was that it would be too risky to rely solely on the gestures that a
touch screen interface affords and that a whole new educational walkthrough on how to
use the app would be required. I agreed that removing buttons would mean having to
educate our users on the gestural interactions, but I knew there were other means besides
overt tips and walkthroughs to educate a user. The concept of showing instead of telling
users how to work a new feature is growing in popularity now, but it was completely new
then, and my boss wasn’t buying it. Her resistance came from the other key factor I’m
emphasizing here: efficiency. You always want to make repetitive tasks as quick and
simple as possible for users. It’s a valid point that bears repeating—don’t get in the way.