Congratulations! You’re planning to build an app!
It seems like a great app, and you think this will really help in making your users’ lives easier. Understanding what development and testing procedures fit best is crucial to creating a successful product. Though, let’s take a step back from that for a moment and answer some very important questions; how do you know that the product that you are planning will be well accepted by users? How would your user understand the purpose of your new design, the value of it as well as how to use it?
The answer is perception, across three variables; namely Affordance, Value, and Usefulness. Let us look at them in a little more detail in the context of an app, that has a use case of booking a cab.
Perceived Affordance (What should it do?)
Affordances are the properties of an object that clearly indicate its possible uses. Don Norman, in his book, The Design of Everyday Things, introduced the concept of perceived affordances. The difference? Perceived affordances are the actions that a user perceives are possible upon encountering an object. Awadh Dwivedi writes,” Desired actions cannot be carried out if the object does not afford it, and afforded actions might not be carried out if the user does not perceive they are possible.” A cab-hailing app UI should clearly indicate its use case upon first glance to your users; which is connecting its users to potential drivers.
Perceived Value (What is it Worth?)
Perceived value is the subjective worth attributed to a product or service in relation to a goal. (3) If your first impressions of a product meet your expectations and goals, you assign a higher value to it, and conversely, a negative experience firsthand lowers the perceived value of the product; this is true of any and all interactions you may have during your experience on the app. If your user’s end goal is to book a cab and your UI indicates the same, they are likely to place a higher perceived value on your app, however, if the user’s end goal is local tourism, then your app’s perceived value will be much lesser.
Perceived Usefulness (How it Helps?)
Davis (1989), the developer of the Technology Acceptance Model refers to perceived usefulness as the prospective user’s subjective probability that using a specific application system will enhance his or her job or life performance. If your user perceives that using your product or service will not enhance their performance or grant them satisfaction, they are unlikely to ever try it. Suppose your user frequently tends to book a cab to travel to places, such as for work-related reasons or over the weekend, the perceived usefulness of the app is quite high, as it is directly enhancing the user’s life. It is important to understand that the perceived usefulness is dependent upon the perceived affordance your product/service provides and the value the user places upon encountering it.
Once you have a firm handle on how your users perceive your product, you may understand the fundaments required to start development. However, fundaments need to be supported by a structure that guides the user into making more informed decisions regarding the product or service, and this is where onboarding and scaffolding come in.
Onboarding procedures are the signs or steps that point to your destination and Scaffolding helps guide your user to understand the procedure to reach the said destination.
Margaret Mead quotes, “ What people say, what people do, and what they say they do are entirely different things.” What the user actually believes a product may do could be quite different compared to how they perceive its affordance, value, and usefulness in context to how they use it, and onboarding and scaffolding ensure that what you hypothesize prior to product development is conveyed to the users as they encounter your product.
In my experience, I once had to redesign the entire software’s UX; as without onboarding, users were having a very tough time understanding the procedure! It is always better to have answers to some key points before you start your development journey, so as to avoid possible business case and development issues later on, and luckily, I have listed them down for you!
Keys to Understanding Your Product for better Development and Positive User Acceptance:
1. Understand the Perceived Affordance, Value, and Usefulness of your Product
Understanding these aspects may vary depending on if you are refurbishing a product or building a new one. If you are building a new product, these questions need to be answered during the ideations phase; affordance relates to your product goal (What it should do), value to its business requirement (What it should be worth), and Usefulness (How it helps). If you are revamping an existing product, you should affirm its affordance again to align with your hypothesis and re-examine if its Value and Usefulness criteria are being met. I will write about this in detail in my next article.
2. Know Your User
There is a reason this message is on a constant loop in all UX practices; knowing your user is key to building a successful product. Understanding your user’s grievances and providing solutions to their actual needs builds a strong foundation towards a durable and scalable product/service.
3. Onboarding and Scaffolding
Transparent onboarding of the users with guidance makes for an informed user base, where the user understands the intended affordance of your product or service and places a value on it that will match your design hypothesis. We need to understand that onboarding and scaffolding are key to user acceptance.
4. Ease of Use
No matter how well you know your user and employ the best onboarding technique in the industry, if your product is not easy to use, it is likely to get abandoned. Ease of Use is directly relevant to the Perceived usefulness of a product and is a stepping stone towards positive user acceptance.
5. Relevant Knowledge Base
Assuming that you have a clear picture of your ideal user, make sure that there is enough relevant knowledge base that the user can build off of. Completely new information is always more difficult to grasp, but knowledge built off experience is easier to retain, recall and recognize. For example, for the Cab booking service, your target audience will most likely be someone already familiar with other similar products in the market, such as Uber or Lyft. In such a case, onboarding and scaffolding are reliant on learned behavior, that the user will have experienced while they were booking a cab on your rival platforms. If your product is similar to those of an existing category, it is easier to estimate what your end user’s perceived affordance and value will be.
We all strive for positive user acceptance, and these key takeaways can be researched independently, or in coherence with other experience design methodologies, such as design thinking or user-centered design.
References:
https://uxdesign.cc/affordance-in-user-interface-design-3b4b0b361143#
https://thejournalofbusiness.org/index.php/site/article/view/161/160
The Technology Acceptance Model July 2006Journal of Organizational and End User Computing 16(1):59-72
https://www.igi-global.com/dictionary/perceived-usefulness-pu/22309
Role Of Perceived Value, Customer Expectation, Corporate, Image And Perceived Service Quality On The Customer Satisfaction ; Rizwan Ali, Liaoning Technical University P.R china , Gao Leifu, Liaoning Technical University, P.R China, Muhammad YasirRafiq, Govt. Islamia College of Commerce, Lahore, Pakistan, Mudassar Hassan, The University of Lahore, Pakistan
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