Coming from a company that carries out a lot of user testing, I was interested to read this article, passed on by my colleague Sara.
It’s about the departure of a top designer at Google, who claims that the way they develop their sites – by using data about how customers use the site – limits the freedom of the designers. But surely this is a sensible way to develop a site like Google?
Looking to users for direction, not only on design but also on site development has proven to be pretty useful for us.
When we’re building a new section of the site (or even a new brand), it’s more a question of presenting users with ideas and getting their thoughts (although aware that sometimes what they say they would do and what they actually do can be two different things!) before we start thinking about what we need and this gives a good idea of the key points that we need to prioritise.
Then, as we develop the ideas on how the site/brand is going to look, we test our ideas with them and use their feedback to improve and refine the journey.
The challenge with developing any new work on a website is balancing the user feedback and requirements with the business owners who have their own reasons and objectives for that piece of work.
Working out what is actually possible technically and within timeframes also impacts the work. So part of the process is finding some middle ground which satisfies all stakeholders.
Once the finalised version of the part of the site we’re working on is built and live, we look at the activity and continue making tweaks in order to optimise it. For example, if conversion drops on a certain page, we can change the order of the pages or amend the information or layout of the page to see if that affects activity.
As far as design is concerned therefore, as the designers are involved at every stage of this process they are able to use their skill, guided by all sets of stakeholders, to produce a design that’s going to help the site do what it needs to do.
So the aim is to use design alongside all of the other elements of the site to make it a success – for us it’s an integral part of the site development process that is guided by a large number of factors, but customer activity and feedback is one of the most important.
