The title is bound to get your attention. It got ours when we discovered this video by digital agency, Squareweave, on YouTube. As funny as the title is, there is also substance behind the phrase, “The user is drunk.”
The principals behind good User Experience and User Interface design are all here in this clip—the designer operates under the assumption that the user is drunk, which makes it all the more important to make the instructions clear and the interface easy to use.
Take a look at their basic advice:
- Guide them: You came from X, going towards Y. This is goal-oriented design.
- Say it twice: They may not have heard you. Icon plus text. Confirmation.
- Say it twice: Speed signs are clever. They might not see it the first time, so repeat it in a few hundred yards.
- Over-the-shoulder test: Watch them get frustrated when using the interface. This is where the design has problems.
- Drunk, not dumb: Don’t lie. Don’t screw up the little things. ‘User friendly’ doesn’t mean over-simplified. Clever, picky users give great feedback. Don’t talk down to them. If they are a power user, let them be a power user.
- The user is fine: Life is busy. But with the attention left over for your UI, they might as well be plastered.
For more information on good UX/UI (that doesn’t involve drunk people) read our article on UI Design by our own Steve Godfrey: The UI Designer + What They Do
Also see, The UX Designer + What They Do
For more videos from Squareweave, subscribe to their YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/squareweave