Rule of thumb for UX: More options, more problems

“Rule of thumb for UX: More options, more problems.”

— Scott Belsky, Chief Product Officer

It’s been a nice find to run into this post with exciting quotes on user experience. It has touched upon different facets of design and on today’s quote, we touch upon the rule of thumb for more options in a design framework.

The posts on user experience are closely tied with our previous discussion about the 5 key facets of user experience to consider for a startup from business perspective. In this short discussion, we focus on the importance and need for a few basic questions before delving into the matters of providing additional options for end users in your product

Rule of thumb for UX: More options, more problems

Why do you need more options?

• What is the end customer goal you are trying to achieve through the purpose? Each additional button is a new thing for a customer to remember. Has that been accounted for in the design?

What is the customer/user benefit?

• Where did the need for additional buttons or choices arise from? Was the customer asking for it? How qualified is this demand from customer? Is it based on a customer focus group/ conversation between sales and the customers?
• Why is the customer asking for this in the first place? What alternative are they currently using?

Will this make their life easier?

• This also includes whether remembering additional options makes it difficult for the customer to use your product

The Cost Benefit Analysis

• Is the investment in time worth to provide the necessary customer benefit? What is the cost you’d bear in adding these options? The cost also needs to consider training customers, customer care or IT support which may arise by these new options.
• Does the new addition provide adequate benefit to bear all these additional costs?

The Startup Design Situation

Beyond all these questions, we all appreciate the fact that software development is a continual process and there’s an eternal tweaking of some designs at stages. Not all companies, particularly startups can afford to have a full time user experience expert or a designer. These are usually outsourced and considered expensive spends.

Considering that in mind, it is important to ask these above questions with key importance to the cost benefit analysis. For a startup, this means that most of the times a new feature or additional options seems to be a NO, which hints that we start on a negative note. However, that also means that each feature or design needs to be to proven to provide an ultimate business or customer benefit.

The end point is not just achieving customer ease, but also to ensure that the business goals are being met through the process. If we venture to do one without the other, it is as good as inviting additional trouble for user design.