EXPERIENCING INFORMATION
The field of user experience design, or simply experience design, attempts to address a broader range of concerns in web design. Some definitions of user experience underscore a holistic view:
"User experience encompasses all aspects of the end-user's interaction with the company, its services, and its products...In order to achieve high-quality user experience in a company's offerings there must be a seamless merging of the services of multiple disciplines, including engineering, marketing, graphical and industrial design, and interface design.[39]"
Other views focus on key aspects of how people experience products and services:
- Usefulness
How well the basic services, features, and functions match user needs and goals; a rational, cognitive response to the end product
- Usability
How well the end product works and how well users can interact with it; the physical, objective properties of an interface
- Desirability
The subjective, emotional response to the site; represents users' spontaneous feelings about the site and the site's owner
A good user experience balances these elements. A user experience is all the behaviors, thoughts, and feelings a person has when encountering a product or service over time. Your job is to take all of these factors into account when designing site navigation.
DESIGNING FOR EMOTIONS
With such definitions, you can see why emotions play a significant role in interface design. Traditional academic disciplines related to web design—human-computer ...
Get Designing Web Navigation now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
