Surprise! Users are Human

The funny thing about users is that they are human. Agency types (and this is true whether we’re talking advertising, marketing or interactive agencies) can get wrapped up in professional debates and obsessing over client deliverables like complex wireframes, heuristic evaluations and in-depth quantitative analyses. But the reality is that there are so many intangibles and so many different dimensions making up a user experience that you can never completely define it with the deliverables. Even qualitative feedback from user testing may fall short. These artifacts are just studies that help us explore the user experience we want to provide.

Frankly, a lot comes down to feel. That’s why you always want to work with an interactive agency that gets engaged and thoroughly enjoys solving problems. They must connect with your product and be able to sense what’s right or wrong with it. Does it have a richness to it or is it minimalist, and does that clean, simple quality adequately reflect the brand? Remember, a blank screen is one thing for Google, but it’s not necessarily going to work for another brand.

Not everyone will think about your brand the way you think about it, but that ability to get into the user’s mind has everything to do with your success and the alignment of your brand value with the user experience. Every choice creates an experience that adds or subtracts from your brand’s emotional bank account.