How great experience can beat bad usability
By: Moritz Bittner
Tags: Usability, UX, Games, Design Thinking, User Experience

Easy to use, seamless, elegant and frictionless. These terms are often used to describe a good product.

As this is true for most things we are supposed to design, this is only one part of the cookie. There is this idea out there called the Customer Experience Pyramid — I think it only limits your thinking.

User Experience and Usability are two related, but very different terms that get mixed up quite often. You might have heard something like this before: “A good usability is the foundation of a good experience”. This is at least debatable. It really depends on how you understand the term usability and/or user experience and how you understand your users needs and desires.

Usability — ISO 9241 definition: The effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction with which specified users achieve specified goals in particular environments. Effectiveness: the accuracy and completeness with which specified users can achieve specified goals in particular environments.

The Little Red Plumber

What might be the goal of a person playing Super Mario? Completing the game or having fun while doing so? Is it fun when it’s easy or when it’s hard? Where is the balance? There is this quote from the director of user research at Xbox that says a lot about the topic:

If a usability engineer designs a game, it would be most likely a single button announcing ‘To win, press here.’ Randy Pagulayan from Microsoft Games Studio

We know that this is not how games work, not how humans work and not how satisfaction works.

The world is full of interesting examples, where objects with seemingly bad, hard or even horrible usability win their users because of their great experience. Sometimes the bad or limited usability is even part of this experience.

No Pain — No Gain

There is a product almost as old as mankind itself. Used by billions. Many smart people have thought about how to create it as perfect as possible. Great grip, good fit, seamless and light to wear — perfect usability.

But there is also one specific type of this product — loved and admired by millions — that doesn’t own most of these features. In a traditional way it actually has a horrible usability. It can cause pain in feet and back, it is not solving any of the initial problems it was designed for, it is almost unusable for any other than flat terrain and can cause serious medical problems. But still, the people love it!

What I am talking about is a shoe, in this case the high-heel.

In the traditional sense of usability it is close to unusable. But in matters of experience it certainly full-fills its goal. If you wear high-heels you appear taller, your legs longer and feet smaller. It can create the sensation of feeling pretty and desirable.

This experience beats the seemingly bad usability, because the goal of a high-heel is different from every other shoe.

For some experiences mankind is willing to take a toll — pain, hangover, bad usability — just as long, as the experience is great enough to outweigh the costs.

Retro Experience

Have you ever used one of those old record players? The experience is great. Your feel very powerful putting on a vinyl. You get it out of its case, put it on the player, lift the needle and as soon as it touches the record your hear a soft and pleasing scratching noise from the speakers, followed by a sound of music that feels somehow deeper, more real than anything you can play from your phone via a bluetooth speaker.

This direct physical connection to the medium is great. I truly understand the trend of more and more people getting back to vinyl.

But have you ever used one of those old record players? It is so tedious! You just started listening to it and sat down with a good book, but then a few minutes in, the music ends and you hear a scratching noise, you have to get up, start the record from the beginning, flip it or look for a new one. Then hope you kept them clean, otherwise the dust will make it sound like a very old radio station. And for gods sake use it with the correct speed, otherwise it will sound either like the Chipmunks or like Jubba the Hut.

As I said, on the one hand side the experience can be awesome, but on the other side the usability is sometimes horribly tedious. I can follow everyone who loves their vinyls. Music becomes so much more tangible. And if you love this experience, the supposedly bad usability compared to an endless Spotify playlist will not change your mind.

It is comparable to the joy of driving an old-timer without AC, servo, automatic windows and proper suspension. Sure that can be bothersome, but it also feels more direct and more connected.

I am friends with some pilots and they told me that they favor old planes over new ones because the new ones actually do everything on their own, everything is automated and digital. With an older plane you can still feel what you are doing because you use direct mechanics to fly it.

Sure, new planes and new cars are way saver and easier to use than old ones, but they are also often less fun. Of course planes and cars should firstly be safe — these stories just display how some things can create a better experience, when they are less easy to use.

It’s Fun, thats Why!

In 2009 Volkswagen published a campaign in Sweden. They called it ‘The Fun Theory’. They wanted to show how fun (or in case of this article — a great experience) can transform behavior. They turned the stairs of a subway station into real interactive piano tiles, ending up with a set of piano stairs that created a sound every time someone stepped on them. Next to the stairs ran an ordinary escalator.