Jared Spool has an interesting article on top user experience challenges. They are:
- Scalability
- Visual Design
- Comprehension
- Interactivity
- Change Management
The other gap I see very often is Site Speed. In my experience, speed makes a tremendous difference to how much a site gets used. What is your sense on readiness of India’s skill pool to address the above – are we there or getting there to world class levels on these areas? I personally feel more confident of software issues such as change management, than areas like visual design and interactivity. Any thoughts?
Latest posts by Alok Mittal (see all)
- Promoters or Entrepreneurs – A choice for Private Equity players - August 3, 2019
- Startup Marathon Mindset - March 25, 2019
- What’s your Customer Culture? - March 4, 2019
Well, there are 3 usability scenarios on the web and each have their own costing:
1. Corporate Intranet, backend, etc where people can be trained. The usability the usability improvement process needs not be as robust as on consumer web.
2. Consumer web, non commerce: these are likely to be high frequency websites and here users tend to figure out what is what. Again less attention needs to be paid to usability. MySpace with it poor interface is living proof of this.
3. Ecommerce websites: these need by far the best usability as users will use them once or twice a year and will not bother figuring out what is what. Here the best approach is to follow conventions set by high frequency sites that your TG is familiar with.
Everything has a cost. One can make usability as wonderful as one wants if one is willing to bear the cost of high quality talent and extremely robust processes. As a manager you need to decide your usability standard based on the above 3 factors and your estimated ROI on usability.
Any sort of software development for user interfacing products whether Websites, GUI applications and other tools require basic expertise in two things:
– hard skills (technical aspect of programming)
a. change management, scalability, speed, etc.
– soft skills (imaginative/creative aspect of programming)
b. usability, designing user interface (visual design) etc.
I tend to think that India has got a LARGE POOL of software professionals who are good in technical aspect but they lack the imaginative/creative aspect of programming which is VERY IMPORTANT for stuff such as visual design, user interface etc.
I think main issue is not size of Skillpool but the say these Usability professionals have in overall product design and roll out . there are plenty of self taught and formally trained [ look at the Student of NID ] who can do as good a job as anyone but my observation is that Folks don’t realize how critical usability is .
Hi Alok,
In my humble opinion, site speed is something that users take for granted now. And you are correct, if in the era of standards, a website cant be fast enough, it better be on the shelf!
As far as readiness goes, I support your opinion. We can take care of software issues but we need to go a long long way before we are pioneers in design and interactivity.
I think a reason could be our innate need to be lead by others. (I know we can start companies and everything but look at the numbers). Most people are still happy working for someone rather than venturing out on their own.
Again, personal opinion. Would want to see what others have to say.
Regards,
SG
Hi Alok,
A timely topic. Having been directly/indirectly in the UX field for over 10 years, I see a glaring hole in the understanding for this discipline in India. It is usually perceived as a page layout and visual design exercise.
Think Apple.
Great user experiences start well before the page is even touched. It is a combination of business strategy, product strategy, and user needs & desires analysis. The iPod revolution was a perfect example of this. the player is but the end result of a through strategic change that Jobs created int he digital music industry. Negotiating the right deals with the music publishers, building an easy transfer platform in iTunes, to a simple, sexy player that users were proud to be seen with. *That* is User Experience design.
Other examples of companies that have gotten it right include Intuit, FedEx, Target, the Cinemax Red Lounge, Virgin Atlantic’s Upper Class. As you can see, the UX is not limited to just technology, and goes well beyond just design.
As Indian companies move into the product innovation realm, they would do well to remember these lessons. And cultivate development of this talent within their enterprises.
Cheers,
Satyen.