The Seven Deadly Sins of UX – Pride
Recently, I listened to an album that led me to look at the Seven Deadly Sins within UX. The Deadly Sins I will discuss are: Gluttony, Lust, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and Pride. In a previous post, I already talked about Gluttony, Lust, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, and Envy. This time we’ll look at Pride.
Just to be clear: everyone is guilty of these, it’s human. Probably not to the extreme degree I describe here. It’s not meant to bring down specific people or companies. It’s more of a reminder, for when it’s needed.
Pride
And now we’ve come to the last sin, namely Pride. Being proud of your work: nothing wrong with that. In fact, it’s much better than doing your work because you have to.
But there is a higher level. When you ignore user feedback because you are the expert or have been in the field for x number of years, at that moment, you know you are too proud. Sure, you are the expert, you have read up on the subject, and you can tell everything about the product, but the user has to work with your product. If you can’t translate your knowledge into the language and needs of the user, your expertise is useless. You can create the best application in the world. If I can’t handle it, I won’t use it. So listen to user feedback.
Here’s an example. There is a park on a campus with several footpaths running through it. Two experts design these paths. They have an opinion on what the best option is to get from point A to point B.
Expert #1 considers the start and end points of most users, what would be a nice path if you want to walk past all the flowers, and how the layout can also be playful, as this ensures that people walk through the park with a happy feeling. The result is that several patches of grass and flowers are trampled because the park users want to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible.
Expert #2 lets people walk through the park and adapts the above criteria to the needs of the user. By seeing where the users walk over the grass, we can see where they prefer to walk. Make a path from the trampled areas, and you make the users happy again. This method was used at Ohio State University. They let students walk in the park, which made it easy to identify the most used paths. These eventually became the paths in the park.
Afterword
As I said at the beginning: everyone uses these sins, at least I do. Maybe not to the extreme degree I described above, as exaggeration can help make a point. But on a smaller scale, I do see the sins reappear. The point of this blog is not to bring people down but to draw attention to these points. Be aware that you use them and don’t go too far.
Are there other points you would place under the sins? Are there sins you miss or use, consciously or unconsciously?
By Jasper Blikman, Consultant and UX specialist