Real life is complicated.
Even after we’ve tested all the important user flows and polished the edges in our app or site, people still stumble. Why? Because we’re humans, and because our products still have:
- Broken flows: transition points or interactions, like a form on a site, that aren’t working correctly.
- Content gaps: someone needs a specific piece of content, but you don’t have it—or it’s not in the right place at the right time.
- Pain points: people get hung up and are likely to abandon the site or app.
Making digital products friendly isn’t enough to make them feel human.
For more on this topic, I highly recommend Design for Real Life from A Book Apart; the ebook is only $11.
Instead of treating stress situations as edge cases, it’s time we move them to the center of our conversations—to start with our most vulnerable, distracted, and stressed-out users, and then work our way outward.
The reasoning is simple: when we make things for people at their worst, they’ll work that much better when people are at their best.
Order Design for Real Life from abookapart.com. See also the WordPress.org Flow glossary for terms inspired by this book that we use in testing WordPress.
The Sensible Leader 
I really ❤️ putting the right things in the right place at the right time. I think it’s easy to overlook that once you become really familiar with a product, especially one you’ve worked on over time. Seeking out the stress points means you’ll at least see those pain point even if you don’t feel them yourself.
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I’ve been meaning to pick up a copy of that book for a while. I really enjoyed hearing the authors talk about it on an episode of the Shop Talk Show (http://shoptalkshow.com/episodes/212-with-sara-wachter-boettcher-and-eric-meyer/). Thanks for the reminder!
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You bet! I’m on my 3rd copy now after giving a few away—it’s that important of a message.
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