Technology vs. User Experience

One typical problem is that technology is seen as more important than the user experience. Maybe you are working at a company where you are the only one who cares about the user experience, or where the group of people focusing on user experience is often overlooked. Other times you as user experience designer may be reduced to perform usability tests of the final product. You may personally be trying hard to make the rest of the organization see how important a good user experience is. But in many businesses, user experience still is not valued or seen as a competitive element.

I still see devices—for example, in the medical industry that require weeks of training, but why waste a doctor's time on training if the problem could be solved with an improved user experience? I still see cars that have absolutely unintuitive interaction panels. When did all car drivers have to become engineers to operate their vehicles?

There are many reasons why devices, software, and systems in certain industries are designed to be difficult to use. But most of the time there's no need for this to be the case. For instance, in the medical business you may need to comply with very strict standards, but these standards very rarely relate to the user experience. And I have never in my life seen any standard saying that a certain product has to be difficult to use. Not even if the product is operated by a surgeon during a surgery. And would you want a surgeon to have to look in a manual many times during a surgery (Figure 19-2) to check how to operate a specific device? I have never seen a standard saying that a certain product should require two or more weeks of training before it can be used.

Figure 19-2. Sorry, I need to look at the manual to see how to use this device.

The problem is often resistance in certain parts of the organization and with the management. The argument is often, “Our competitors make even more complex products.” And maybe your company is even earning more money on training people how to use the device than on the device itself.

Resistance to creating good user experience is certainly a challenge for you as a user experience expert and/or innovator. But there are solutions, as described in previous chapters of this book.