Today, building a user experience that is worthy of your brand needs to go far beyond smart, intuitive design. In fact, if you want to create a user experience that will endure and be of value, you need a combination of psycho-socio-technological skills.
Reality check: The digital environment today
The lines between digital users and real-world paying customers are more than blurred—they are gone. What’s more, your customers expect world-class experiences from your brand online, on their phones, and always on their terms. So the systems that get out of the way and let your users accomplish their tasks with simplicity, elegance, and grace are the ones that will be adopted and will earn brand loyalty. And the ones that are fun and engaging will draw users back and ultimately earn brand advocacy.
That’s the end goal. But how to you get there?
In order to earn brand loyalty and brand advocacy, you need to build your system with insights from the psychology and sociology disciplines, as well as the design, heuristic, and software engineering disciplines.
In psychology, you have to understand human behavior and the science of decision making. This requires a deep inspection of the factors that make up human decisions, motivation, and behavior change, and how they apply to the experiences that you provide.
In sociology, an understanding of human interaction, competition, and a study of the use of online social networks need to be integrated into your requirements.
The art of design needs to be combined with a thorough knowledge of heuristics, user-experience engineering, and interaction modeling. Also, understanding the mechanics of minimalistic design and the principles of simplicity are critical to adoption and success. Then combine all of these elements and build a system to have an enduring quality so it’s always fast, performing, and secure.
In order to build a system that is worthy of your brand, you need start with these insights and account for them in the strategy phases of your development. The good news is that the science behind these factors has never been more accessible and usable—no Pysch degree required.
