interaction
design
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IX
Overview
We have finished interface designs of the entire product. Interaction design is the process of planning the expected behavior of a product when in use; this is the final piece of the user experience.
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What happens when a user taps a button?
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Where do they go next?
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What functions are expected to be performed?
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What does the transition look like?
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How will the user be engaged?
We’re digging below the surface of a product design to detail out the non-visible behavior the user will experience when using it. These design plans are documented in the UX Development Guide.
The following objectives will guide the end to end user experience to achieve our targeted product goals:
I. Reduce Friction
Reducing friction is the process of optimizing a product to make every interaction as smooth and as efficient as possible.
What do transitions between interfaces look like? When should content be loaded so it is available when the user needs it? How should error messages look and what should they say? Do we need to add descriptive text in less intuitive interfaces? Or perhaps a help button? Which direction makes sense for the menu to move onto the screen? Is it comfortable and expected by the user?
After the user finished generating their new Mojicons, we prompted them to enable Mojichat in iMessage.
We moved the keyboard instructions to Settings to avoid confusion.
In designing Mojichat, we offered both an iMessage Extension and a Keyboard Extension. The benefit was clear: our iMessage Extension would offer the best experience but only the Keyboard Extension opened Mojichat to third party apps and social media platforms. However, since users had a better experience with our iMessage Extension, we guided users to add and use the iMessage Extension first… ultimately burying the Keyboard Extension in our Settings for pro-users more comfortable with the complexities of third party keyboards on iOS.
II. Maintain Relevance
Acquiring users to a new platform is hard work. Once acquired, maintaining relevance by delivering the right solution at the right time is critical.
This is obvious in some applications like a news reader... users must be able to quickly discover and consume the latest, most desired news content or your product will likely become irrelevant. For a messaging app, delivering messages consistently, in chronological orders and at an instant is just as important as having a contact method. For other apps, location based or timely notifications might be equally important in maintaining relevance.
In designing youPass, one of our key value propositions was something none of our competitor’s products offered. We focused on live sharing of our data so our user’s contact lists could always be up to date with the latest, most relevant contact information. We found it was important to be as comprehensive as possible, so in the latest versions of the product we integrated with over a dozen social networking and messaging services.
III. Maximize Engagement
Although we can all hope and dream people will fall in love with our product and use it as much as possible, this is usually only achieved through a strategically designed user experience that very deliberately guides the behavior we are seeking.
There are dozens of ways to bring users back to a product time and time again even if their return is not driven by pure desire. Continuous streams of great content and built-in messaging/social features can be fantastic at driving organic engagement with a product. Sometimes we must rely on push notifications, email communications or integrations with third party services to drive the engagement we seek.
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Part of the vision for youPass was to make 'linking' with new people online as fast possible. We leveraged Apple's Wallet (formerly 'Passbook') to display our youPass on a user's lock screen when in close proximity with other youPass users.
To balance the drain on battery life, we checked a user's location no more than once per hour. Our server provided locations of the 20 closest non-friends for iOS to geofence. When users crossed into each other's geofence, youPass was conveniently displayed on their lock screen--signaling someone was nearby and providing instant access to their QR code.
IV. Drive Growth
If the right product truly delights the right audience at the right time, consumers will hopefully promote your product to other potential new users and fuel growth through word of mouth. That’s more wishing, hoping and believing than I’m comfortable with. As a user experience designer, it’s important to consider new user acquisition and growth from the beginning.
Many mobile applications provide in-app invitations to acquire new users. Although this may provide useful if your growth is fueled by word of mouth, there’s many other ways we can achieve growth beyond word of mouth. Identifying the right mix of features and design to fuel this organic growth is something more familiarly referred to as ‘growth hacking.’
Mojichat for iMessage fueled organic growth even after advertising stopped.
Although users needed to add friends in Mojiit AR, we totally removed friends from Mojichat.
With Mojiit AR, we struggled to offer immediate value as new users had no friends on our platform. But with Mojichat for iMessage, our product at its core was a means of self-expression and communication... so as long as we acquired active users, we fueled our organic growth through the iMessage App Store integration.
V. Provide User Security & Privacy
At a small scale or for an internal product, the importance of this may vary. But for most user experiences, user security and privacy must be taken very seriously and should be considered by design.
How will you protect private user data? Does your application need a passcode lock or password sign in? Is encryption required for messaging? Are sharing options necessary to restrict content to its intended intended audience? Are screen captures ok?
