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UX Design
What is User Experience (UX) Design?
It is the design of a process that brands or teams make to add meaningful and relevant experiences to products.
The user experience design, often mistook as user interface design, is more than just that. It starts before the product has been acquired by the user, all the way through the entire process of buying and using a product.
The Honeycomb Framework
The user experience design comes from the honeycomb framework, comprising of key attributes such as usefulness, desirability, accessibility, credibility, find-ability, usability, and valua.
Nike
Good user experience design can be observed from Nike's website, the most prominent being the less-for-more concept. This refers to how Nike designed its website such that potential customers, visitors do not need to make too much actions, instead only needing to scroll down the page to find what they like, as Nike have designed the page to be in a sequence where many of the key information can be found in the home page, including its advertisement video, showing its vision and customers, featured products, popular products, as well as its respective prices and availability. This falls under the desirability and findability segment of the UX honeycomb framework.
Nike also features large and neat fonts for its website, and even large font for its slogan. The use of large and neat font is especially important, as there are viewers who may have physical limitations, unable to read small text, or their screen may minimize the sizes of websites. As such, large and neat fonts are important to widening the range of potential customers. This falls under the accessibility segment of the UX honeycomb framework.
In the respective product landing pages, Nike implements gifs, a short video loop. This is a great strategy, as customers are able to receive much information from this short video, compared to just looking at hundred of images, as it shows how the product reacts when used, such as the flexibility, texture, and an all round look at how the product performs. This also falls under the desirability and usability segment of the UX honeycomb experience.
Nike's less-for-more strategy can also be found in other parts of its website, and not just its home page. In individual product's landing pages, customers now only need to click the shoe color, and the sizes will automatically show up, without needing to click other buttons, or having to wait a few seconds for the sizes to come out. This means fewer chances of distractions, and customers can be more focused on finding the product they like, and buying it, also falling under the desirability segment of the UX honeycomb framework.
Lastly, Nike has a section at the bottom of each product, featuring their customers wearing the product. This further gives potential customers a good feeling, and encouragement to buy, as they can tell that Nike is confident in their products, and the people wearing the product looks good in them as well, and they can see themselves wearing the product too. This falls under usability and credibility segment of the UX honeycomb framework.
In conclusion, Nike can be said to have good customer experience design, especially its key less-for-more design, including using infinite scroll strategy, which reduces unnecessary actions, and having little unnecessary functions and having the layout to be in simple black and white, reducing distractions to customers, and helping them focus more on their purchase. Thus, by meeting every aspect of the UX honeycomb framework, they can be said to have brought value to users with good customer experience design.
Sonos
Similar to Nike, Sonos can be seen to have relatively good user experience design, featuring a less-for-more concept as well, with only 3 buttons available, and not glaringly obvious, meeting the findability aspect of the UX honeycomb framework. They also feature good aesthetics, such as calming countryside color, and good pictures, meeting the desirability aspect of the UX honeycomb framework. Lastly, they also use large and neat fonts, which helps to reduce limitations users may have when viewing Sonos' website, fulfilling the accessibility aspect of the UX honeycomb framework.
When viewers first enter Sonos website, they are greeted by the promotional video with a catchy tune, introducing Sonos' range of products, and its aesthetics, adding on to the desirability aspect of the UX honeycomb framework. It also shows the general feature available for all its products ranging from wifi, bluetooth, and its app that is able to control its user's favourite apps including Spotify, Soundcloud, YouTube and more!
Additionally, it is able to connect with other Sonos speaker, playing the same items from various location. By showing the functions through a video, users have a better sense of how the product will perform, as compared to looking at a static picture, because they are given a 3D view of the product. This falls under the usefulness aspect of the UX honeycomb framework, because customers can tell whether the product meets their needs or not.
Lastly, throughout the video, it does not mention the title of any of its products, only showing how the product looks and works, complementing the desirability functions. This is important as well, as it does not distract customers from Sonos range of product segment and 'Q&A' segment as they have their specific purposes towards engaging customers and helping customers make informed decision.
This makes the video simple, catchy, and yet still shows key functions and information that are important to the consumers, all in less than a minute, also counting towards the desirability aspect of the UX honeycomb framework.
As users continue to scroll down, they are able to directly see Sonos' range of product, and what exactly those products are for. Sonos did well in enabling users to understand in a simple sense, what each product is for, with as little words as possible, for example, ‘for your TV’, “for bold bass’, and ‘for every room’. This means users do not have to be distracted thinking about terminologies and can be more focused on understanding Sonos' product features and making purchase decisions. Here, Sonos meets the criteria of usability and usefulness with its design strategy.
The interface for the products is also straightforward and simple, only showing the front face of the product, purpose, and in subtitles, the model, and only requiring users to click the arrow button to scroll sideways to see more. This means that users are able to straight away see if the product is what they want. If it is not, they can simply press the arrow button. Because users are able to navigate easily to find what they want, this counts under the findability aspect of the UX honeycomb strategy.
In individual product pages, the page is focused on showing the features of the respective speakers, while the checkout button is located on the top right, in black, as ‘Add to Basket’. According to a survey done, ‘Add to Basket’ generates a higher number of conversions compared to ‘Add to Cart’. As the ‘Add to Basket’ button is simple and convenient, users can be more immersed in the aesthetics of the webpage and understanding the features of the individual products, helping them be less distracted and make an informed decision.
As users continue to scroll down, right under the products, Sonos feature a “Q&A” segment, where users just need to pick a choice in 3 questions, and Sonos can recommend the most suitable product for users. This is especially useful for customers who still do not know what they are looking for. This function also makes customers feel that they can make a more informed decision. Because Sonos is able to show customers how they can fulfill their needs, this contributes to the usefulness aspect of UX honeycomb framework. Additionally, the user experience design of Sonos also falls under usability, because the website is simple and easy to use, and if users have doubts about what they are looking for, Sonos can help them make a more informed decision, by getting them to answer 3 simple but crucial questions.
As such, Sonos can be said to have good customer experience design as well, meeting 5 of 6 criteria of the UX honeycomb framework. The UX of Sonos directly results in a smaller bounce rate and more sales. Additionally, because Sonos makes an effort to understand customers better, customers will feel more satisfied and generate word-of-mouth.
References
Wesolko, D. (2016, October 27). Peter Morville’s User Experience Honeycomb. Retrieved from https://medium.com/@danewesolko/peter-morvilles-user-experience-honeycomb-904c383b6886
Martens, T. (n.d.). Less is More: Simplifying your User Experience: UX Booth. Retrieved from https://www.uxbooth.com/articles/less-is-more-simplifying-your-user-experience/
What is User Experience (UX) Design? (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/ux-design
Pictures retrieved from https://untitledproject.sg/the-importance-of-user-experience-design/
Pictures retrieved from https://www.usability.gov/what-and-why/user-experience.html
Pictures retrieved from https://www.nike.com/sg/
Pictures retrieved from https://www.sonos.com/en/home
Pictures retrieved from https://www.amazon.com/Project-Guide-Design-Experience-Designers/dp/0321607376
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