Khal Weir

Usable is vanilla, its a C grade. Aim higher.

Nobody ever recommended a restaurant because the food is edible, they say things like ‘the menu had these great stories about each cocktail’s invention’, ‘they played this cool authentic music’ and ‘food is served on these antique plates’. It’s details like this that create a memorable experience and that keep customers coming back.

How do we achieve this on the web? You need to trigger emotions, make your users smile or feel like they achieved something awesome. It can be through great copy, the way you deal with complaints or quirky easter eggs in your site. Get this right and your customers will fall in love with your brand and become ambassadors.

Brand ambassadors will tell their friends about your product and be willing to engage at a much higher level. This can lead to drastically reduced marketing budgets and even allow you to crowd-source your support.

So stop doing usability testing, it isn’t enough for a task to be be achievable. Instead really observe users as they interact with your product and gauge their reactions. What could make this task more fun, more enjoyable, more rewarding?

More reading :
Stephen P. Anderson’s Seductive Interaction Design
Aaron Walker’s Designing for Emotion