At Gather, a positive user experience is an end-user's successful and streamlined completion of a desired task. We spent alot of time thinking about this as we created work-flows, templates, and the holistic interactive environment
We wanted the user experience to be:
- Comfortable
- Intuitive
- Consistent
- Trustworthy
The term user experience has been defined and described in many ways, but when I was working as the Information Architect at Gather, we defined user experience as "the overall perception and comprehensive interaction an individual has with the Gather site from publishing, connecting, creating to communicating. The Gather user experience would be an end-user's successful and streamlined completion of a desired task."
When designing a good user experience it's important to remember these four principles, which should be a part of any usability or user experience specialist's toolkit.
While these are not the only components of a complete experience, these principles form a solid structure upon which to build a foundation of usability, information design and brand application.
So now that I no longer work at Gather, I have a different perspective and desire for a great user experience -- because now I am the user.So sound off - how is your user experience so far with Gather? Are their places that you fall down; places where things make no sense; or are just not what you expect? Building a great online experience is all about the content, but the cognitive structure of your experience is important too.
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Comments: 7
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"Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication.....
Electronic technology fosters and encourages unification and involvement. It is impossible to understand social and cultural changes without a knowledge of the workings of media"
-Medium Is The Message
Interfaces must:
• Be more aware of themselves.
• Be more aware of their surroundings and participants/audiences.
• Offer more help and guidance when needed, in more natural and understandable ways.
• Be more autonomous when necessary.
• Be better able to help build knowledge as opposed to merely processing data.
• Be more capable of displaying information in richer forms.
• Be more integrated into a participant's workflow or information and entertainment processes.
• Be more integrated with other media.
• Adapt more automatically to behavior and conditions.
Sorry for the random quanta-like thought process I am experiencing.
-W
It's a great site, chock full of wonderful things they didn't have to pay for (evil grin), but... Intuitive it ain't.
Lloyd
Trustworthy? Aside from a few minor glitches that are getting ironed out, I think so. Generally, what I expect to happen--publishing, commenting, whatever--is what actually happens.
Comfortable? Yes, I think so. Except I get frustrated when I post a comment, and then quickly decide to add a second comment. It can't be done without first leaving the article in question and then returning to it.
Consistent? Well, I think so. That's a hard one for us non-users to be aware of, I think. I haven't noticed anything showing up one way on one page and a different way elsewhere.
I certainly ENJOY my time on Gather!
Clearly, the way you set up this blog has created an ideal use of incentives for people to post work and participate in a "rational actor" model of feedback, with few exceptions. My only objections to the whole setup are that some types of writing shouldn't be 'rated', like poetry, and it should be possible to 'block' offenders from posting comments on your articles, if they keep harassing you with their painful and pointless criticisms , no matter how well intentioned.
But, overall, you guys did a great job. And I'm glad I finally noticed you today, because you are clearly exactly the sort of young Promethean creative Macarthur Prize type I wanted to meet and exchange with .