Wow! I just spent an hour sitting in on a fantastic online class offered by General Assembly featuring Dan Maccarone of Charming Robot, entitled "Why UX Matters." I tend to approach business decisions from a consumer perspective instead of that of a marketer, something I've often felt is a "bug" rather than a "feature" of how I think relative to other MBAs. While Maccarone professed his love of data, it's clear that his successes have been largely driven by consumer empathy. Here are some key takeaways from the session:
Creating a product means creating an experience, and that experience is the brand. Maccarone talked about his work with Hulu, Foursquare, and Rent the Runway -- specifically, the need in each instance to create an experience users loved. He identified RTR as the most complex because of users' need for rentals to not only be visually appealing as seen on the site, but also to fit and flatter.
A feature set is not a strategy. Here, and elsewhere in the class, Maccarone touched on the temptation to include certain features simply because they're available or on-trend. Second Life was one tech trend that came up several times, and Maccarone gave an example of an online poker site that initially added complementary features prompted by the question, "What else do people do while playing poker?" The answers were talking to other players, so online chat was added, and listening to music, so a DJ function was added that would sync with iTunes. These additions made sense, but eventually the client asked to add a series of other functions, until what had been an online poker platform was now a virtual world that included the option to play poker (or, strangely, write a book in collaboration with other gamers).
The medium should dictate the experience. It's important to ask why the product should exist in a particular space, whether browser, mobile phone, or tablet. Some examples Maccarone gave of great UX design/strategy were Instagram's initial mobile-only launch, which he described as smart from both a consumer and a business standpoint, and The New Republic's redesigned website, which demonstrates an understanding how how people want to read TNR articles. He added that smarter startups understand how to incorporate insights into their existing products as they evolve.
Think about your first-time users. This was another piece of advice I thought was obvious but brilliant, once I'd heard it. New visitors come to your site from a variety of places and could land on any page, so it's essential to communicate why they're there, what your company does, why you're good at it, and why they should come back.
Just because everyone is doing it doesn't mean it's a good idea. Beyond the Second Life example, Maccarone discussed unnecessary pin buttons and the check-in function on Yelp. With regard to the latter example, he pointed out that while Foursquare and Facebook friends tend to know each other in real life, Yelp is primarily a restaurant review site -- do you really want people you don't know having your location info?
Launching is just the beginning. User experience will grow over time. It's important to launch even if you know things aren't exactly perfect, because part of the process is getting feedback and improving the experience over time.
The session led this second day at #DLD12 by Dan Maccarone, founder of Charming Robot (a product design company based in NYC) handed over a tool box filled with practical advises on digital product branding.
Under the umbrella of the newly launched DLD Campus and the IBC, General Assembly’s Peter Bell ("Who's gonna build the future?"), Alexis Ohanian ("Making something people love") and Dan Maccarone ("Why user experience design matters") held three sessions on the #DLD12 Monday.
These coaching sessions brought the spirit of General Assembly, the “campus for technology, design and entreprenuership” to #DLD12.
The one thing one should keep in mind at all times, Dan Maccarone said, is to think about the user first, and only second as a marketer: "You can't force people to do what you want."
A positive example of how to successfully embrace the user spirit was CNN.com in 2006, where Dan put headlines into focus at all times. The strategy was based on the assumption that people would come to CNN in order to get informed quickly, to read the headlines. The skyrocketing traffic proved him right. When a successor later tried to shift the website's focus on videos, many users simply logged off.
The iTunes page ("bombardment of information, not even personalized") and Craigslist belong in his opinion to the list of bad user design examples that are anyway successful because of their product. The same goes for Youtube, he said.
Also, one should not try to chase trends like many big firms ("Just because everyone else is doing it does't mean it's a good idea!"), keep in mind that every decision adds complexity and that the medium dictates the experience, think about first-time users but design for repeat visitors, and know that a feature is not a strategy.
All this in mind, your digital product brand might soon become reality.
