How the Right User Interface Can Enhance Success in the Development of Electronic Devices
Matt Barthelemy
Want to design a successful new electronic device? The difference between success and failure may lie in the design of your User Interface - the screen that connects the user to the brain of the mechanism. In this article, the author provides helpful direction with how to create a successful user interface. A recent study showed that half of all product returns to consumer electronics stores involve a product that works - it's just that the consumer couldn't figure out how. This research suggests that if you improve one single aspect in your New Product Development process, you can reduce returned and unsold products by 50 percent. That one aspect is the product's user interface or UI.
A primary factor behind the success of new electronic products is gaining consumer confidence and satisfaction by ease of use with the creation of successful user interfaces. A well-designed interface will not only prevent frustration but more importantly will promote the purchase, frequent usage, and positive "buzz" of a product. This has been handled brilliantly by products like TiVo and iPod, and it is an area of design that we focus on at our firm.
User interface and product design
Electronic devices are an ever increasing part of our lives; the average U.S. home now contains 25 of them. On their screens we conduct business, share information, connect with our friends, and entertain ourselves. For user interface designers, these screens represent the design challenge of the century - future business will be conducted within the boundaries of that real estate.
When billion-dollar companies deliver a customer experience that is encountered only online or through any electronic interface, their key differentiator is user experience. That’s a combination of interface, interaction, visual design, physical controls, and usability that often boils down to the look and feel - what end users experience when they use a product.
With each new electronic product comes a new interface, and each new interface means a new opportunity to interact with consumers to entertain, simplify, connect, and conduct business. Our job as designers is to create the best user experience possible, so that companies have the opportunity to increase customer contact time, strengthen loyalty, and enhance their brand.
The best user experiences come from integrating the physical or hardware design with the software or interface design. Concurrent development of a product's industrial design and its interface design enables not only better integration between the controls and what happens on the display, but can create opportunities for unique, "ownable" solutions that can set a product apart in the market place. This can lead to increased recognition of and demand for the product. Finally, user interface designs can benefit greatly from user input and testing, during which Method's interaction team tests interface functionality.
Branded ubiquity
With each new launch of an electronic device, companies are presented with the opportunity to brand the experience through the design of the hardware, the interface, and their services. Wherever you can put an interface, you can have a relationship with a customer. And that means you can do business with them, you can attract and satisfy them - or you can frustrate and repel them.
As both technology and economies of scale enable the capabilities and processing power in our electronic devices to increase, likewise the display design possibilities and the opportunities for innovations within the product continue to expand. As electronic devices and their interfaces do more, people are doing more with them, spending more time engaged, and creating a combination of new abilities and dependencies. This is creating a new relationship between products and their users. Our goal is to make each touch point for consumers coherent and compelling. The best interfaces are not simply between a user and a product, but between people and people, between ideas and results, and between customers and brands.
Imagination and collaboration invent the future
Recently, when Microsoft wanted to design and prototype a new hardware and software platform, they turned to us to envision the future of communications and media within the home. We partnered with a hardware design firm, and together conceived and built a system for describing and evaluating our concepts. Bill Gates used the interface we created to present a tangible vision of a portable, near-future "home media center" at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference.
The interface linked various prototyped devices that could share and access content, messages, and services across devices, using device-specific versions of the interface. A portable screen, similar to a tablet PC, acts as a display and controller for all the media within the home. The prototype displays everything a family could watch or access, from scribbled messages and family members' schedules to media playlists and commercial entertainment.
It also allows for "synchs" between all the family members' gadgets. The interface allows users to attach and retrieve phone messages, voice notes, and virtual sticky notes, making it a center of family communication and scheduling.
We are currently engaged with Microsoft on the development of a new media center interface, intended for production.
A faster way to prototype experiences
For the new generation of smartphones, we worked with Palm to find out what consumers want and then figured out the best way to give it to them.
To imagine the future, you have to step away from the product spec. You have to ask, "What if?" then sketch it, develop ways to communicate those ideas, and make prototypes. The process begins with traditional ethnographic research, visiting consumers, watching them as they use their phones and conducting interviews. Basic as that sounds, ethnographic research uncovers opportunities that are often overlooked in the rush to design.
Following the research phase, we built a foam core prototype model of the phone. To simulate the onscreen behavior as a user navigated from one interaction to another, dozens of peel-off paper screens were created. A member of the design team served as the logic of the machine, swapping out one graphic for another as the user made choices. The "paper prototype" is a fast and low cost way to refine an interactive design. Flow diagrams documented users' interaction paths within the interface. The final deliverable prototype was a set of screen-by-screen specifications and hardbutton diagrams that show exactly what should happen with each press of a button on the device.
Designing next generation mobile experiences
Combining an MP3 player with a mobile phone sounds simple. But what happens to your music experience when your phone rings? How does the visual design match up to the user interface to create an interesting experience? Do you search for both songs and contacts the same way when they are categorized differently?
Before you can answer that question, you have to conduct research, create wireframes, run task flows, and test prototypes. Designers handle the user interaction modeling and graphic user interface for products, such as a mobile media player and a next generation phone. The goal is a seamless experience and an easy-to-use phone that can launch applications.
Use caution when crossing platforms
Increasingly, clients are interested in reaching their customers through an array of devices and platforms from stationary, large screen TVs to highly mobile, hand-held products with very small displays. It becomes quickly evident that you cannot simply take a one-size-fits-all approach - scaling up a mobile phone interface to live on a laptop or large TV offers a very unsatisfying experience for users and, ultimately, for the company CFO.
The key to developing cross-platform interfaces is striking the correct balance between consistency and customization. Consistency is critical for brand expression and for allowing users to comfortably interact with a company’s offerings on different screens without having to relearn the interface. But device-specific differences are necessary to ensure the experience is appropriate and satisfies a user's intentions, which change based on the device, location, and time of use.
A good example of this is how Promptu, a voice-powered search technology provider, created cross-platform technology. Mobile subscribers and TV/cable users can search for and find content quickly just by asking. With the aid of visual cues, users can say "U2," for example, and receive a choice of music, videos, ringtones, wallpaper, even concert ticket promotions related to the rock band. Whatever the media, Promptu delivers via user-friendly information design.
Starting from the essential underpinnings of the company's service offering, we refined the interaction design and created the visual look and feel of the interface. It's a whole new way of interacting with products, and Promptu's technology delivers impressively. Design work included each interface screen, icons, fonts, and colors that allow Promptu users to quickly understand and navigate within the interface, regardless of platform, in order to access their media choices. The design also had to attract both wireless phone and cable TV providers to offer Promptu as part of their service. The business proposition is giving added value to their customers by making it very fast and easy for users to find content they can purchase and enjoy - creating a win for users, cable and mobile phone carriers, and media providers.
Creating value
The ability to compete effectively on the user interface screen - by delivering services, access to information, shopping, downloads, and entertainment- separates successful companies from the also-rans. Designing user interfaces for access across multiple platforms is increasingly becoming an imperative for companies to reach their customers as content and services migrate from one device to the next.
Create a better interface and you create a better experience. Interface loyalty leads to experience loyalty, and experience loyalty creates brand loyalty. When that happens, you create satisfied, long-term customers. And that is money in the bank.
Matt Barthelemy is Vice President of Strategy at Method (matt@method.com).
Method is a multi-disciplinary branding and design practice, headquartered in San Francisco and with a New York office (www.method.com).
