The growing importance of Design

Experience matters! Macromedia coined the phrase back in 2004, more and more people are ‘getting it’. In a world where everything goes from invention to commodity within a couple of years and consumers are bombarded with information and new tools, usability and experience design are the key differentiators.

Oh, and I’m seeing the rise of the next differentiator after UX: great, personal customer service. The future looks good.

First off, we’re inundated with “news” (see: infotainment) lately, so there are simply a lot more media outlets reporting on what they deem newsworthy.

Secondly, brands have always been newsworthy. And many businesses are realizing that Brand = Design. Thank you Steve Jobs.

You’re absolutely right. At the recent meshU conference in Toronto, the design stream was standing room only. It helped to have people such as Digg’s Daniel Burka and Wufoo’s Kevin Hale but even so people are really into design now because the success of an online service hinges as much on the look and feel as the technology that powers it.

Mark

Agreed! Advances in presentation layer based technologies are enabling an improved user experience in the digital realm. Also, in reference to to the iPhone mention, a future with natural user interfaces versus machine oriented (keyboard and mouse) will make technology accessible and pleasing to everyone. That is what good design is all about.

Agree design is important, I’m a Libra after all. In my recent experience working with some online dating sites and web services I’m finding that ugly and free trumps paid and beautiful most every time. Majority of people just don’t care about design which is unfortunate. I think usability is what’s most important, in its relative importance to design.

I’d hate to give all the credit to Apple (and if you say thanks to Steve Jobs, you can’t forget to thank Jonathan Ives) but it’s hard to ignore the fact that since the introduction of the first iMac, Apple has insisted that not only does design matter, and aesthetics or beauty and fun even, but also that these things are, in an essential way, the _only_ things that matter, at least when you’re trying to get people to buy, use or invest a bit of themselves in your products and services. The first iMac’s cuteness and OS X’s “eyecandy” was met with skepticism and suspicion at first but nobody disputes it now. Tech folks/geeks/developers have slowly been won over, but consumers were there first.

I think it would be rather hard to argue that the iPhone “completely rewires the global mobile phone market” (unless you have any references for that statement) - but it has shown that a better mobile UI is possible, even if most people see it as an over-priced gimmick.

@Jonathan: the fact that all mobile phone manufacturers now have iPhone copies suggests how strongly the iPhone effect has been.

Josh: To “completely rewire” the market is a bold statement and implies a lot more than just having a nice-looking product. In so far as manufacturers of any product will copy something they think might be a tend, that is true. But that’s what’s always happened. Underneath the multi-touch and nice icons, the iPhone is exactly the same as any other phone on the market (and is explicitly designed to be so in fact): closed, locked down and conservative. I don’t call that a rewiring - I just call it good design.

From a web design background, I feel that design is always on the tip of my tounge. However in the past not many people outside of the design industry understood, but now friends and family are starting to hear about it in the news.

Its because companies like Facebook and Apple are introducing it in to everyone’s life. Pretty much every adult, child and animal are on Facebook, and their profile is their output. So for it to change means that it will be a big thing for the user. As for Apple they brought around the start of the reinvention of such a huge market, mobile phones.

As someone who’s helped many companies with their mobile presence and mobile marketing efforts over the last several years, I’ve also used many handsets on all the major carriers, and watched consumers with theirs.

Almost without fail, each time I’ve witnessed first-hand how usability is a major stumbling block to adaption in mobile.

The iPhone addresses the issues in ways deeper than just putting a touch screen on the same old phones.

It’s hardly a gimmick. But don’t take my word for it, here are the numbers from a leading research firmshowing what happens to adoption when the functionality is freed and made usable through design:

“M:Metrics found that a staggering 30.9 percent of iPhone owners watched mobile TV or video, versus a 4.6 market average, and more than double the rate for all smartphone users. Usage of social networking is also popular among iPhone users: 49.7 percent accessed a social networking site in January, nearly twelve times the market average. Twenty percent of iPhone owners accessed Facebook, one of the first Web properties to customize its content for the iPhone, versus 1.5 percent of the total mobile market.”