97 Things Every UX Practitioner Should Know

Chapter 55. On-Brand Whimsy Can Differentiate Your Mobile App

Martha Valenta

When designing an intuitive experience, it’s obviously important for us to use common, familiar interaction patterns and to use them consistently throughout an app or a website. At many companies, a design system will be available, and keeping consistent with the design system will keep your systems intuitive.

But sometimes there is a good case for dreaming up a completely new interaction that suits the specific app you’re designing. It might help users transition from the physical world to how it’s done in the app, such as the Weather app showing motion imagery of the current weather. Or it may simply bring a special on-brand whimsy, such as the slot-machine-styled restaurant picker in the old Urbanspoon app.

When adding delight, how do you come up with this special on-brand interaction while keeping the design intuitive? Here is a procedure for brainstorming and refining unique interactions:

1. List every possible experience: Think broadly in this step. Review any prior user research so that you have a rich pool of information to pull from. Then make a list of users’ experiences. Think about interactions pertaining to the task at hand and delightful experiences these users typically enjoy outside of the app. Once you have a list of user-focused experiences, start thinking about the business. Consider ...