Interface 101: Part Three – User Experience

We’ve had a great Interface 101 series thus far, and we are excited about creating content that you, as our readers, are enjoying and learning from. We’ve covered a lot about the basics of interfaces, what they are and what they aren’t. If you haven’t read the previous parts, read them here:
Part One: Basic Interfaces
Part Two: Advanced Interfaces
In this post, we will discuss the concept of user experience.

What is “user experience”?

User experience, or “UX”, is just what its name implies – the experience of the user. It is very important to treat this concept from a holistic standpoint. The user experience involves every feeling, notion, belief, action, and response that the user undergoes when in contact with your interface set, brand, or product. User experience extends well beyond the world of interface design (although it is extremely important within the confines of interface design). As a case example, we will discuss the user experience for Moe’s Southwestern Grill. For those of you who are not acquainted, Moe’s is known primarily for their tongue-in-cheek marketing, welcoming atmosphere, and ridiculously large burritos.

A customer follows a line of actions that the user experience team studies very carefully.

1. Initial information

For one to choose to go to Moe’s, they have to have some kind of initial information of Moe’s. There are many possible informants for companies, including:

• Advertisement (broadcast or print)
• “Window-shopping”
• Word-of-mouth

A good company makes sure that each of these initial informants provide the potential customer with the correct image and initial emotion and perception of the company. Advertisements will be created to match or further the branding and feel of the company, and to entice the target audience without being pushy. “Window-shopping” is when a potential customer who has never heard of Moe’s from any advertisement or word-of-mouth sees the actual company venue, and decides to give it a try. When speaking of internet user experience, window-shopping would be the use of a search engine to find a desired website, and is a far more common initial informant than advertising or word-of-mouth. (This statement only applies for online user experience.)
While both advertising and “window-shopping” are largely controlled by the company, the customers have complete control of word-of-mouth information. The company’s branding and product or service usually are the heaviest influencing factors on the word-of-mouth information, but in the end, what the customer has to say is not decided by the company itself. (This constitutes the importance of product reviews.)

So in the case of Moe’s, one like myself may have had a myriad of experiences with the initial informants before actually going and purchasing food at Moe’s. A mixture of advertisements and word-of-mouth were the final drawing factors.

2. Product and Service Experience

Product or service experience deal with every single aspect of the use and interaction with a company and their product or service (I know, that was a tough one to guess). This is where most companies place the highest emphasis. Studies show that it is much cheaper to retain a loyal customer than to try to gain new customers; for most companies, then, the initial informants are not nearly as important as the product and service experience.

It is important to note that the word-of-mouth informant is regenerated by excellent product and service experience.

Take the following (false) story for example.

One day, my friend Joe walks into Moe’s with a coupon ad in his hand. He is welcomed thunderously (”Welcome to Moe’s” screamed by the employees). The restaurant has a vibrant color scheme, and the menu is full of tongue-in-cheek humor. Joe pays a modest amount for a burrito and some chips. He sits down after visiting Moe’s infamous salsa bar and takes a bite out of his burrito. He is blown away! He finishes every last bite of his meal, all the while looking around the room at the odd phrases on posters on the walls, intrigued by the music, and most importantly captivated by the food he is eating. Immediately after Joe leaves the restaurant, he twitters about his amazing lunch at Moe’s. Later that day, while Joe and I are hanging out, Joe mentions one of the posters in Moe’s. This is my initial informant. I ask Joe if he liked Moe’s. Joe, obviously, goes on a 20 minute rant about his Homewrecker (for those of you who are unfamiliar, that’s a burrito). So I decide to go to lunch that next week with Joe to Moe’s.

In the example, Joe’s experience was good enough to entice him to tell someone else about the product or service. This is an extremely powerful, free way of advertising.

Often, product and service experience is reoccurring. This is particularly true outside of the food industry. Most of what we use on a daily basis will be used again the next day, week, month, or even year. Very seldom will we visit and use a website or store one time. This is a very important consideration for user experience teams, again because of the loyal customer to new customer price tag ratio.

3. Employee/Customer Interaction

Employee/customer interaction may not necessarily take place with every user experience, but it is definitely important to note aside from product and service experience. Employees are the face of a company more than anything else. It is therefore important to make sure that any interaction between an employee and a customer supports the company’s existing image, standards, and brand. Emplyee/customer interaction can take place in multiple ways.

• Product demonstration/”sales pitch”
• Technical support
• Customer support line (phone)
• Alternative support

An example of great alternative support can be seen by Charter Communications. While frustrated with a recent error on his bill, my same Moe’s friend (Joe) tweeted about it, mentioning Charter in his tweet. Within a few minutes, a Charter representative replied to his tweet, offering to help and to fix his bill. Not only was his bill fixed by the representative, but he received a credit on his bill as well. This greatly improved Joe’s user experience as a whole.

Conclusion

As we have seen, good user experience regenerates a company’s customer base. There is a line of actions that a person follows to become a customer with a particular company. It is of great importance to study that line of action and increase the quality of the user experience at all points, most importantly in the field of product and service experience. The user experience revolves around the customer’s experience with the actual product or service, and therefore should be central to the user experience team’s strategy.

These are the main points of user experience; there are thousands of different ways a person interacts with a company’s brand, product, and employees. Hopefully these basic interactions will help you better understand what user experience is, and will help you on the path to creating the best user experience for your customers.