DON DODGE: Hi.
I'm Don's Dodge, and this is "Google Root Access," the show
for startups.
And today we're going to talk about user design and user
experience.
I have a special guest, Izabel Idris, who focuses on mobile
applications and user experience.
Izabel has worked with several large companies to develop
applications and has also had her own startup.
So, welcome Izabel.
IZABEL IDRIS: Thank you.
DON DODGE: So we're going to talk about how to start
building an app that delivers a great user experience.
So let's say I have a great idea for a startup and--
how do I create user experience?
What does that mean?
IZABEL IDRIS: I think the way to get started is to really,
as a company or as a team, define your goals, define your
user, and from that you create personas and use cases.
So personas are a fictional user that actually capture all
the attributes of the real users that your application is
tailored for.
So what you really want to do is actually think of features
and implementation last.
You really want to understand your goals, your use cases,
and personas, and throughout the implementation process,
you want to always kind of go back to those, kind of
reference that, because as startups, you're pivoting
frequently, stress can get high, you run out of time, you
have limited resources.
So you always want to know really, why are we here?
What are our goals?
What is the most basic thing?
What do we really need to nail?
You got a nail the right things, get things right.
You need to get the right things right.
And so I think that it's really important to always
kind of reference those throughout the process.
DON DODGE: So when you talk about personas and use cases,
I think what you're saying is that for the same application
there could be different users and different use cases.
Is that what you're getting at?
IZABEL IDRIS: Yeah.
An application can have several different personas,
and for each one of those personas, you have several
different use cases.
There's a whole process about how to create use cases and
personas, but basically you always want to make sure that
your application, your experiences and service of
those personas and their needs and their use cases.
DON DODGE: So you could have teenage users and middle age
users and women and men, and they have slightly different
use cases and personas.
So that's the idea?
IZABEL IDRIS: Yeah.
There's a whole process to how not to create conflicting
personas, like you can't please everybody, so that's
kind of a whole other process.
But yeah, you kind of need to spend a lot of time early on
in the process really figuring out who your application is
for so you can deliver delight to those people.
DON DODGE: So a lot of startups aren't that focused
and methodical.
They dive right in and start developing features.
I mean, we're engineers so we're going to start
developing features, and then pull the features together and
try to build a demo, and then give it to a few users and
figure out how they're going to use it, because they'll
say, I don't know what the use case is.
So how do you get involved with a startup who's already
built something, and how do you sort of put that on hold
and go back and do the user experience design?
IZABEL IDRIS: Well user testing is crucial, so if you
were to have a prototype already, I think it's really
good to test it with different kinds of users.
But when you do test it with those users, have them
categorized in some way.
Understand that I'm going to do a test with teenagers, or
I'm going to test with soccer moms, or I'm going to do a
test with people that are foodies and then I'm going to
do a test with people who are bargain shoppers.
So kind of understand who you're testing with and then
see maybe who your application is most
successful with those people.
And then from there, I guess you could kind of reverse
engineer it and then go into use cases and
personas from there.
But ideally, you really want to have a clear idea of who
your application is for.
And everybody between developers, designers, and
product managers can reference these throughout the process.
Everybody we use uses cases and personas in slightly
different ways to make different decisions, but I
think even if you start out with a prototype and you don't
have spec that you might have started out with, you
definitely need to try and define who your users are and
their use cases.
DON DODGE: So earlier you mentioned to me a application
for ordering pizza.
And let's say there 850,000 apps in the App Store, and
many of them do the same thing.
So what's an example of a great user experience versus a
not so great user experience where the functionality is
exactly the same?
IZABEL IDRIS: I think that comes down to your special
sauce, no pun intended since we're talking about pizza.
So your special sauce is really a way that you can take
your goals and actually turn those into features to really
meld those two together and elicit an emotional response
in your users.
So that means it's something you can engineer.
So for example, let's say you have a pizza application, and
this pizza application services users who are foodies
and they're really interested in getting pizza that's local,
sustainable, and that they want to give
back to local farms.
So let's say that's my goal as a pizza company.
In my application when I choose toppings for my pizza,
they could have a sustainability score.
And then when I order my pizza, I could share it on
Google+ and say, look I have this certain sustainability
score, and try and get your friends to see if they can
beat your source, so you can actually gamify the whole
experience.
And then the pizza company could offer a free pizza to
the person who shared their pizza if someone else were to
purchase as a result of their share.
So basically--
and also the users would feel really good that they've
actually ordered your pizza, because you're giving back to
local farms.
They're doing something good for their community by using
your product.
Obviously, your pizza has to be amazing.
That's kind of a given.
So you may have tons of companies with great pizza and
a really nice checkout flow and a really nice ordering
flow, but you're pizza company makes people feel good about
ordering pizza.
They feel like they're doing something good for the
community, good for local farmers--
if that's important to them-- and then, of course, it's fun.
DON DODGE: So building in gamification into the user
experience makes a generic kind of pizza application
special and unique and more successful.
IZABEL IDRIS: Exactly.
DON DODGE: Great.
Who knew that user experience could improve a pizza
application?
Well, thank you very much.
This has been great.
Thank you for joining us, and join us again when we have
another Root Access show on issues of
importance to startups.
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