One of the most shocking things any designer ever said to me was that I was really lucky to get so many good A/B test results. I didn’t know what to say. Instead, I started asking questions and soon understood that he thought A/B tests were a way to test your guesses. He thought I was guessing because he was guessing. He had no idea whether a new design would be better or worse and was relying on the A/B test to measure his luck.
Good UX is not a matter of lucky guesses. Guessing is not design. Design gets results intentionally. I hope, after reading this far, you are already starting to agree.
If you understand value in the business model and you have diagnosed all the big problems, there is one general principle that will ensure you get the most out of your designs: luck. Or the technical term for luck: probability. Your designs won’t be better because you are luckier, they will be better because you understand how luck works in UX.
All Things Being Equal, What Will a User Click?
Instead of relying on luck, let’s break down the behavior of one click to understand how it works.
Imagine a menu down the left side of a website, a very ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month, and much more.
