Who am I?

Gary Elsbernd

Sometimes I get an idea that won't leave me alone. Whether these ideas are about design patterns, technical development or implementation, archery or science fiction, the elsblog is where I put my ideas and hopefully share them with the world.

I am a passionate advocate for user centered design with more than 30 years of experience. In my current role as Principle Experience Designer for Sun Life (US) based out of the Kansas City office, I am particularly interested in usability and performance centered design in web and mobile applications. 

Consistency is the key, written on a post-it note

In my career, I have heard the quote “Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds” when a client or business owner wanted to do something new, often for the sake of doing something new. The full quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson is ““A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” There is a very important distinction there.

Consistency is essential to reducing the cognitive load of your interface – the mental effort required to complete a task. When a design is consistent, every interaction feels smooth and frictionless. When it is too inconsistent, the user must expend unnecessary effort figuring out the interface instead of completing the work.

If you work in the field of User Experience, you have to know about the following resources. I will keep adding to this list.

Krug, S. (2013), Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, Berkeley, CA: New Riders

Designing an application is a balance between making it easy to learn and easy to use.  Something easy to learn may require additional instructions, work breakdown or examples.  Something easy to use, on the other hand, assumes mastery of the domain knowledge an tool, and attempts to streamline the task at hand.

An analogy that caught the industry interest recently is a comparison of IT delivery styles with how we treat pets versus cattle.*  In a nutshell:

  • Pets are owned in small numbers, uniquely named, hand reared and lovingly cared for — they are, by all considerations, members of the family. When they get ill, you nurse them back to health.
  • Cattle are owned in large numbers, tagged using a standard system, identical, managed in herds, and bought and sold as a commodity — they are, in effect, food. When one gets ill, you replace it with another one.

ClippyClippy was ahead of his time.

I'll let that sink in.

Clippy, the infamous Microsoft Office assistant,  was introduced in November 1996. He was refined three years later, in Microsoft Office 2000. He went into retirement two years later, when he was turned off by default. And he finally departed this digital veil in 2007, when Microsoft Office dismissed him all together.

User experience will happen. Whether it's designed up front, or a product of users interacting with your product after the fact, the human and product will interact. Good UX happens when we make decisions in a way that understands and fulfills the needs of both our users and our business.

It's important in this definition to recognize both sides of the equation; the user and the business. UX design strives to produce positive emotions in the user, whether it's through delight or just satisfaction in getting the task performed efficiently. On the other hand, anyone working for an organization has to ensure the organization goals are met as well. Sometimes negotiating between the two stakeholders can be tricky, when the needs are in conflict.

So why do we need UX? To ensure someone is looking out for both sides equally.

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