6 UX Principles Every Product Manager Needs to Know

Summary

Discover the key user experience principles that every product manager should know to create successful and user-friendly products, including usability, consistency, feedback, flexibility, emotional design, and user-centered design processes.

Creating a product that delights users and drives business success requires a deep understanding of user experience (UX) principles. As a product manager, you need to grasp the fundamentals of UX design to ensure your product meets the needs and expectations of your target audience. In this guide, we'll explore six essential UX principles that every product manager should know and apply to their work.

1. Usability

Usability is the ease with which users can interact with your product to achieve their goals. A product with high usability allows users to complete tasks efficiently, effectively, and with satisfaction. To improve the usability of your product, you should focus on the following aspects:

Learnability: Make it easy for users to learn how to use your product, providing clear instructions, tooltips, and onboarding experiences.
Efficiency: Streamline user workflows, minimizing the number of steps and interactions required to complete tasks.
Memorability: Design your product so that users can easily remember how to use it, even after extended periods of disuse.
Error prevention and recovery: Help users avoid errors by providing clear guidance and validation, and offer easy ways to recover when errors do occur.

Example of Good Usability: Slack

Slack excels in usability. The interface is clean, intuitive, and easy to learn for new users. Features like keyboard shortcuts and slash commands enhance efficiency, while the consistent design language across channels and workspaces aids memorability.

2. Consistency

Consistency is the uniformity of design elements and interactions across your product. By maintaining consistency, you can create a seamless user experience that feels familiar and predictable, ultimately reducing cognitive load and increasing usability.

Visual consistency: Maintain a consistent visual design, including colors, typography, and UI elements, across all areas of your product.
Functional consistency: Ensure that similar features and interactions behave consistently, so users don't have to relearn how to perform tasks.
External consistency: Align your product with established conventions and standards within your industry or platform, leveraging familiar design patterns and interactions.

Example of UI Consistency: Google Suite

Google Suite, a collection of productivity tools, demonstrates strong consistency across its various applications (Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, etc.). The visual and functional consistency within and across these tools makes it easy for users to switch between applications and understand how to use new features.

3. Feedback

Providing feedback to users helps them understand the consequences of their actions and the current state of your product. Feedback can take various forms, such as visual cues, sounds, or vibrations, and should be timely, relevant, and informative.

Visual feedback: Use subtle animations or color changes to indicate the state of UI elements (e.g., buttons changing color when clicked).
Auditory feedback: Employ sounds to communicate success, errors, or other important events (e.g., a chime when a message is sent).
Tactile feedback: Utilize haptic feedback (vibrations) to provide a physical response to user actions (e.g., a vibration when selecting an option on a touchscreen).

Example of User Feedback: Apple iOS

Apple's iOS is known for providing users with clear and timely feedback. For instance, when users interact with buttons or other UI elements, they receive visual feedback through animations and color changes. Additionally, iOS uses sounds and haptic feedback to communicate important events or confirm user actions.

4. Flexibility and Efficiency

Designing for flexibility and efficiency means accommodating a range of user behaviors, preferences, and skill levels. By offering multiple ways to complete tasks and adapt to different use cases, you can create a more inclusive and satisfying experience for all users.

Customization: Allow users to personalize your product to better suit their preferences and needs, such as changing color schemes, font sizes, or interface layouts.
Shortcuts and accelerators: Provide shortcuts, hotkeys, or other efficiency-enhancing tools for expert users, enabling them to complete tasks more quickly.
Adaptability: Design your product to work seamlessly across different devices, platforms, and input methods, ensuring a consistent experience for all users.

Example of Flexible UI: Trello

Trello, a project management tool, offers flexibility and efficiency by providing various ways to organize and interact with tasks. Users can customize board backgrounds, labels, and filter views to suit their preferences. Additionally, Trello supports keyboard shortcuts for expert users and adapts its interface for both desktop and mobile devices.

5. Emotional Design

Emotional design focuses on creating products that evoke positive emotions in users, leading to increased engagement, satisfaction, and loyalty. By considering the emotional impact of your product, you can create a more enjoyable and memorable user experience.

Aesthetics: Craft an aesthetically pleasing visual design that creates a positive emotional response and conveys a sense of quality and professionalism.
Delight: Incorporate delightful details and interactions, such as engaging animations, humorous copy, or personalized content, to surprise and delight users.
Empathy: Understand and address the emotional needs of your users, designing your product to support their goals, alleviate their pain points, and foster positive emotions.

Example of Emotion-Infused Design: Headspace

Headspace, a meditation and mindfulness app, excels at emotional design. Its clean, colorful, and inviting visual design evokes a sense of calm and happiness. Delightful animations and empathetic, supportive copy create a user experience that promotes relaxation and wellbeing.

6. User-Centered Design Process

User-centered design (UCD) is an iterative process that involves understanding users' needs, designing solutions to address those needs, and validating those solutions through testing and feedback. By adopting a UCD approach, product managers can ensure their product is built around the needs and expectations of their target audience.

User research: Conduct interviews, surveys, and observations to gather insights into your users' needs, goals, and pain points.
Prototyping and iteration: Create low- and high-fidelity prototypes of your product and iterate on them based on user feedback and testing.
Usability testing: Test your product with real users to identify potential issues, validate design decisions, and gather insights for future improvements.

Example: Airbnb

Airbnb is known for its user-centered design approach. The company conducts extensive user research to understand the needs of its diverse user base, iterates on its design through prototyping and testing, and continuously refines its product based on user feedback and usability testing.

By understanding and applying these six essential UX principles, product managers can create products that resonate with users and drive business success. Focusing on usability, consistency, feedback, flexibility, emotional design, and user-centered design processes will ensure your product delivers a seamless and enjoyable experience that meets the needs of your target audience.