So I was re-reading old posts and came upon a comment that advised me to submit my articles to RedGage to reach more readers. I decided to finally check out the site and see what RedGage was all about. I came to the home page and selected upload near the top of the screen to see what I needed to do to upload a blog post. After I clicked, I was met with this:

As you can see, I hit a roadblock that forces me to login or create an account in order to proceed. Look more closely and you can see that there are no other options. No “x” to close out of the modal window. I am forced to use the “nuclear option”, refreshing the page and starting over.

As a web savvy kinda guy, I know that this isn’t the end of the world. But, it makes me pause and think, “Do I want to do this now?” “I just want information, why do I have to join the site?”  The site is forcing me to make a cost/benefit analysis on the home page, BEFORE I have had a chance to interact with the site in any meaningful way to assess it’s value to me. Since the site has yet to convince me that it’s worth joining,  I let the page sit, in a cost/benefit limbo because they boxed me in.

As I have written before, nothing should stand in the way of your user successfully performing the task that she came to your site to do. Taking that a couple of steps further, people make mistakes, so your site should be prepared for those mistakes and help the user solve them herself without resorting to the (gulp!) non-contextual help pages or throwing the switch and starting over. What if this happened after she had filled in a form? You’ll not likely see that use come back because this site just wasted her time.

One way to get around this is a technique called progressive disclosure. Giving user only the information that they need to make a decision to go onto the next step. When I am at the home page and I have not logged in, I am guest and i am looking for information. I am not yet ready to commit. Only give me the info I need to determine if I want to go further. if so, great. If not, no harm , no foul. I don’t feel as if I over invested to get information.

Take a look at your site. Are you asking too much of your users at any given stage? Are you noticing that people are bailing on forms or not performing all the steps you laid out for them to accomplish a task? If so, see how you can break up the process into smaller, more easily digestible steps instead of one giant leap.

So it got me thinking and spelunking on the web. But the answer was in one of my Evernote folders. The author of an article that I clipped spoke about the user experience and echoed something that I have been speaking about all along: the designer and the brand must take into account what the user’s expectations are when landing on the site.

This user expectation is what drives Google and other search engines. When I search for something, I expect that the page that I land on will give me (some of ) the information that I am looking for. If it doesn’t, then I bounce and am off to the next option.

Trust me, I am going somewhere with this. So let’s say that you have a touch point with a prospective customer. And let’s say for example that this touch point is not a digital channel. You handed them a card, a flyer or they saw your ad on TV. What do you think that their expectation would be once they got to your site?

Of course you know the answer. They expect to recognize something in the web space that they saw or experienced in that other channel. If they don’t that is a disconnect (shock) and that is bad, because users usually react negatively to shocks online (aww).

But even if you have everything aligned and symmetrical between your channels? Well, you still have this: The New Room Effect.

As you might expect, the New Room Effect is derived from the experience from entering a room that you have never been in before. The momentary confusion when confronting something new (and let’s not forget that confusion = fear and hesitation) is alleviated when one locates familiar objects. Ah, that’s actually a window. Oh, the toilet is over HERE. Anticipating and compensating for this confusion is the essence of UX and UI design. Here is a snippet from the article by Shawn Borsky for Anthem Design Group:

The main focus of interfaces should not be avoid all confusion, because that’s not practical. Its too easy to confuse a user. It is much better focus on how to handle confusion or hesitation. Consider this situation. When you walk into a room or building in which you have never been, you will be initially confused.

Why? Naturally, you must become familiar with the new information before you can interact with it. I like to call this the “New Room” effect. Your main focus as a designer should be to anticipate this stage of analysis and confusion and then dispel it quickly by creating familiar cues, anticipated guides, and goal oriented design.

So okay. When you are asking people to perform a task, say, BUY NOW!, this is not the time to make your user spend valuable time and cognitive energy trying to determine if this object is or isn’t the proper button to click. Not to make too dramatic a point, NOTHING should stand in the way of your user accomplishing the goal you’ve set for them and you should do whatever you can to help them decide that your goal is their goal. That’s digital’s contribution to a solid, cross-channel, brand-nourishing, customer-centric creative strategy.

More from Shawn Borsky:

What does this mean for usability designers? Our goal should not be to make something simple or clean, those approaches will come later. We should first make sure to help our users form the right expectations, be comfortable with the results, and become familiar with the process.

This of course, takes a keen understanding of your audience and your business objectives. Take time to evaluate them both and how those two usually competing objectives will interact so that everyone feels satisfied.

Creatives and clients, ask yourself and your team: what would the average user expect to see when they land on this page? Why is the user here? What barriers can I remove for the user? When you answer those questions, make sure that you have created enough expected creative/content/brand elements that reduce the time that it takes for your users to figure out that they are in the right place and that it’s actually easy to accomplish their (your) desired task.

SHAMELESS PLUG:
We’re UX, UI, and IA experts at M19 MEDIA, and we answer those questions with every site that we build. Give us a call if we can help you.

I’m in an Asian restaurant for the first time today. I’ve been past it, looked at the menu in the window but never went in.

At the door I inform the hostess/owner that I only have 30 minutes to eat. She tells me that I have plenty of time. Looking over the menu, I notice a Singapore Mee Goreng. The Indian version at Rasa Sayang is one of my all-time favorites. Same ingredients? Yes. I go for it.

What I got was not at all what I expected. It looked different from what I really wanted, but it was vaguely recognizable so I muddled through. I was in and out in 20 minutes. Great.

What does that teach is about user experience? Simply put, user experience is the interaction between the user’s expectations and the business objectives within a particular medium.

So let’s break it down: I came in wanting to be served quickly. I communicated that clearly and the restaurant responded to my needs. They know that about me. You can also know that about visitors to your site. What kind of people are they? Why are they there? How can you as a business satisfy that demand and meet or exceed those expectations?

The next point is the dish itself. Before you launch into me, I know full well that the restaurant had no way of knowing that I was actually looking for a dish from another eatery. And I also know that there are a brillion ways to make Mee Goreng. But what the restaurant could have done was to minimize the surprise by having a picture of the dish on the menu. Some of the more fast-foody Asian establishments do exactly that. It’s the same for your users. How can you minimize surprises and make sure that the user is aware what’s coming next?

The use of good, simple navigation, grouping your information in logical, germane categories and creating a user interface that prepares the user for the next step of the interactive process are good ways to achieve this goal.

So, I’ll be back at Hunan Asian Cuisine for sure. Will I order the Singapore Mee Goreng? Probably not.