How do users interface with your app? Do they take actions in a UI with a keyboard and mouse? Do they tap on their phone’s screen? Do they open up a chat in their favorite chat client? Do they dictate actions to Siri? I don’t know about everybody else, but those are usually questions I don’t think much about, and instead I let the product folks think about questions like that, and find ways to meet their requests (or demands). However, not paying attention to the user and how the user interacts with the application is a huge failure on my part.
It is the easy, lazy, thing to do, to ignore that aspect of software development that we, typically, as software developers are not good at. We like to ignore the human factor; what people think and feel when they go to use our applications. We would be perfectly happy to assume anybody coming to use our application would be coldly logical, not caring one whip about aesthetics, and intends to use the app just like we imagined they would. Yet it turns out that people who use the applications we develop are human beings too, with hopes and dreams and aspirations that we could not possibly know about, and they in turn would be perfectly happy not using our application, and going somewhere else for the whatzit that we provide. Perhaps even somewhere else that does not have nearly as much functionality as we have, but looks prettier.
So, how does the user experience your app? Do they enjoy using it? Does it give them what they want quickly and easily? Is it truly helpful? Do they only use it because they are forced to? Is there a better way for the user to get in, acquire their whatzit, and get out (assuming you’re not trying to trap the user like some unmentionable apps)?
Would the user be able to acquire their whatzit easier by talking to Siri? Does the user even need a graphical interface? Would the users like your app better if it had better interactions with other apps they already use? Is there any way that the app can just know what the user intends to do when it opens up, either by surrounding context or simply previous use?
Originally Posted on my Blogger site October of 2018