First Impressions Last

Whether we like to admit it or not, we judge people very much on the first impression we get of them. Glance at the person in Figure 1-5. Do you have an impression? Very likely you do have an impression, and it's from just one quick glance at a single image.

Figure 1-5. First impressions last.

There is also first impression for the user experience of a product. If your product needs eight hours charging before you can turn it on, if the user is faced with tens of difficult questions before you can start using your web page, or if the user's impression of the sales shop she enters is far from optimal, then you have given the user a very bad first impression of your product.

In the best case, the result is that the customers will lower their expectations respectively. This is, however, not good for any business, since it will also lower the price expectations of your product.

In the worst case, you will lose existing customers, or you will leave the customers with a first impression that can take at least ten great user experiences to change into a positive overall experience. Figure 1-6 shows an example of how a poor first impression might take some time to overcome.

Figure 1-6. Example of user experience curve when the first impression of your product is bad

Many web page developers in the world do not understand that a Flash introduction means losing a large amount of customers (even if it looks cool), simply because it may take tens of seconds or even minutes to load. Many owners of social websites mistakenly believe that users want to tell everything about themselves, and spend several minutes doing this even before they know what to use the website for. Many device manufacturers ask users to configure complex settings before even letting them get into the core functions of the device.

So, in other words, your first impression lasts a lot longer than you think—and a bad first impression may already mean that you have lost a large amount of customers.

For tangible methods on how to create successful user experience innovation around first impressions, refer to the approach described in Chapter 10.