The Age of User Experience?

The other night i attended a seminar by Microsoft's User Experience Evangelist, Shane Morris. The session was titled 'The Age of User Experience', and Morris opened by arguing that we can no longer hope to rely on adding new features - we must offer a better experience. He claimed that users would be making choices based on their experience, and that products therefore needed to be differentiated on experience, not just features. One example was the NYTimes desktop application, which offers readers a different experience of the news - you can browse by image, for example, to find stories you like. The NYTimes has apparently released stats saying that readers using the desktop reader spend ten times as long reading the news than those using the website. And while the user experience of the desktop reader is rather nice, it also packs quite a lot of features that the website doesn't offer.

I found this very interesting in light of the recent flurry of discussion around simplicity. For those of you who may not have seen this debate, Don Norman recently published an article claiming that simplicity is overrated. His core claim is that features sell - even useless ones - and as a result he challenges the idea that simplicity should be a design goal. (A bunch of people have posted thoughtful responses, including Josh Porter and Gerry McGovern.) My question is, if Norman is right and customers are selecting products for their additional features, are those same customers thinking about the experience? Norman claims that people will buy a product based on features, and only discover later that it is hard to use. In order to make the leap into the age of user experience, as envisioned by Morris, users need to value the experience at least as much as they value the features. I think that's a gap that will be bridged, but i don't think we're there yet. As user experience people, we should be considering what we can do to bridge that gap for users.

Of course, Norman is talking primarily about physical products, and websites (as McGovern argues) have a different set of issues. McGovern argues that the things that make us desire complexity, such as the need to exhibit status or the desire to insure ourselves against future needs, do not apply to websites, where the experience is immediate and usually private. However, i think this depends on the type of website in question. In user testing on our homepage, people consistently say that the page is very busy, but then quickly add that it has everything they need. There is a desire for complexity here, but also a desire for ease of use. It's not enough to say that simplicity is essential, because sometimes, it's quite the opposite. Website use may be immediate, but it can also repeat - if the features aren't there, will you get the repeat traffic you want? And if the features really are desirable enough will people really care about the quality of the experience? TripAdvisor is a great example. I hate this site - i find it horribly confusing to use once i'm off the homepage. But a colleague tells me that if you persist with the site, you learn it quickly - it almost teaches you as you use it. And it certainly has no trouble attracting traffic and registered users.

I'm not convinced that the Age of User Experience is upon us just yet (i wish it was!). I'm also not convinced that simplicity is irrelevant, especially on websites. I think we're faced with continuing to negotiate complexity vs. simplicity, features vs. experience, and we probably always will be. But if the Age of Experience is nigh, we have a real opportunity to shape it.

Love to hear the thoughts of others in the group on these issues.