A Nomadic User Experience Lesson – The Airport

In my recent travels to Southeast Asia this summer, I realized, while walking through the Suvarnabhumi Airport (Bangkok), that the airport is a great example of the user experience.  Our experiences when traveling (i.e. rushing around in unfamiliar surroundings) offer great similes of the experiences we find when surfing the web, frantically looking for info or diving into a new software application for the first time.  For the non-designers out there, this might give you a little insight into how we user experience designers process and think. For the designers, maybe this will come in handy the next time you need to explain the idea of UX design to a new customer!

USER NEEDS

The first thing we have to remember is that successful designs put the user’s needs first.  Here we consider the WHAT. Below are a few needs our users might encounter:

This is also what we can call “Task Analysis” – or understanding at the highest level, “What does the user/visitor need to do when they are here?” Designers keep these needs close to their hearts so that whatever they build or create addresses them. When users are successful and pleased with how they can do what they came to do, that is a positive user experience.

INTERACTION DESIGN

The next layer we’d consider is the HOW. How will our users get these tasks done? And if they make a mistake, will they be able to correct themselves, adjust, and find the right path. One way to help surface the possible decisions a user might make, or the order that user might make them in, is to create some scenarios. The scenarios can be based on statistics or common behavior patterns. Or they can be best guesses just to elicit ideas for further testing.

Establishing some “use-case scenarios” like the examples above are stories that can help flush out certain details of a user experience such as potential decision points, error recovery points, and user-specific tasks. These stories bring the problem to life. They can be elaborate or simple depending on the type of website or application, but should be as closely based on user behavior or research as possible. Additionally, these scenarios will vary between distinct user groups or types, which in turn helps uncover a majority of the critical interaction issues that can be experienced.

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

Once we know what our users need to be able to accomplish – what, how, why, and in what order – we can begin organizing how information will be presented to them. This is how we first begin developing the information architecture, the framework and order that establishes what should be given prominence or de-emphasis as well as when and where.

NAVIGATION DESIGN

From these examples, we are able to uncover some items that can become key pieces of the wayfinding system, or the navigation. In the airport, these would be the signs hanging above your head as you walk around or on the wall or even on the ground. On a website, these would be the main tabs at the top of the page, the primary navigation, secondary navigation, and utility or global navigation. Back to Bangkok, one neat feature I noticed on the signs after I arrived at the airport was that it left a great “scent” trail for visitors. Scent? Yes, that’s right.  In the UX world, scent refers to cues that help lead you to the thing you’re looking for – like a bloodhound on a trail. The signs leading down the corridor to my transfer area had an extra detail below the word; it read 350 meters…then 250 meters…and so on. I thought that was a nice touch because, though the walk was long, I knew I was walking TOWARD my goal, rather than away from it and I had an incentive to keep going.

INFORMATION DESIGN

With the architecture of the site or space planned out and organized into a structure or hierarchy, we can begin to design for understanding, which is the Information Design.  As a traveler, you must become accustomed to new places, cultures, and languages. With that, an important consideration in information design for airports is to communicate clearly and effectively to all who enter, despite the language they speak. This is where iconography can be exceptionally helpful, because as the saying goes, “a picture says a thousand words”, or in this case, says it without words.  Icons are used to direct us to the men’s or women’s restroom, taxis, baggage, emergency exits and more. Another example of information design can be found on the departures and arrivals boards. There can be a dense amount of information that can be overwhelming and hard to decipher as you’re running by it. A way to resolve this is to establish a system for how the information is layed out on the screen, and a grid to align text and numbers so that they are easy to digest and scan. Similar information, like gate numbers, can have the same visual treatment and column position so that a user can quickly learn how to read the board. The same principles apply to the web. Knowing what users are trying to accomplish, we can break down large amounts of info into smaller chunks that are easier to understand, group them into sections, and clarify with support images or icons. A grid structure can also improve understanding. For example, we can allocate certain areas of a page for a sidebar navigation menu, or a bottom area for a special footer, or even a column on the right for certain panels. By setting up these “zones”, the user can begin to learn a pattern of how to find things faster, improving their user experience.

Next time: VISUAL DESIGN – the face of the user experience and my specialty. The top and most apparent layer of the user experience is the visual design. What we’ve learned in this series is that design starts deep in the roots of user needs and the most successful designs are built with this ground up approach. The visual design layer brings it all together by enhancing and reinforcing the interaction, information architecture, navigation, and information design. Introducing the elements of art: line, shape, form, space, texture, value and color; and the principles of design – balance, proportion, rhythm, emphasis and unity in combination with effective use of typography can dramatically turn a user’s experience from one of contentment to sheer delight.