Macadamian Blog
Is looking good as important as being useful?
Consumer software companies have always been concerned about the looks, or visual design, of their product. Lately, in a phenomenon that some of us in the UX design space call " The Apple Effect", enterprise software companies, telecommunications companies, and medical device compaines are all placing far more emphasis on visual design. Recently a customer, who develops a medical software product, told us explicitly - we want nothing less than a WOW! from customers when they see the new product.
Is looking good as important as being useful? Is great visual design as important as great usability?
Yes. Not at the expense of usability, mind you, but yes - great visual design is important.
Whether we like it or not, we all make snap judgements about products. We make decisions about it's quality and usefulness in a matter of a few seconds. If you create and sell software for a living, this is critical. Your future customers are deciding whether they should spend more time getting to know your product, and deciding whether they should buy it, based on a snap judgement. They decide when walking by your booth at a tradeshow whether they should stop for a second look based on what they see in the screenshots. They decide whether they should pay attention to the rest of the demo based on the first few seconds of seeing the product. It goes without saying though, that visual design can't be at the expense of usability - we've all tried to use great-looking products that simply don't work. They both have to work together in balance.
People will have an emotional reaction to your product, and as we're seeing in consumer products, it has a direct effect on sales. How do you know if you're acheiving a "Wow-Factor" with your product? Test for it. Early in the design phase, put the mockups or prototypes in front of some users, and observe their reactions. Get them to tell you their first impressions.
First impressions matter, so go forth and make great looking products. Just don't forget about usefulness and usability.
About the Author
I've worked in the software industry for over 13 years, starting in QA and development in a consumer software company, then product management, and marketing. Eventually I escaped the harsh winters of Ottawa to establish Macadamian's office in the SF Bay Area. I currently reside in California.
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I've been having this argument from time to time at work. I've read your argument about the wow factor before (in the A List Apart article mentioned in the comment above, in one of those famous design books, and now in this blog post) and agree with it to some extent. The question I have, however, is how important is the wow factor in healthcare. We all know that most of the software used in healthcare is circa 80s or early 90s, so wowing a user isn't all that difficult. I mean, do you really need an Apple-esque design to impress a doctor? I would argue no. I would say that most healthcare professionals have an assumption that software built for them is going to be cumbersome and unusable. So in my mind a usable application is going to be cause for a nurse or doc to exclaim "wow".
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Sep 24, 2009
10:24
There was a fantastic article at A List Apart on this very topic, which comes to the same conclusion (ie. there is a lot of value in the WOW effect):
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/visual-decision-making/