Outliers

Last week I attended a day of the UX Week conference and was lucky enough to listen to a talk from Bernhard Seefeld and Elizabeth Windram from the Google Maps team. During their talk they mentioned something that perked my interest. It didn’t sound like the same old, same old when I hear people talk about user experience.

They design for the power user.

Now they backpedaled a bit later when they started talking about how they design for the power user without the expense of the novice or new user, but it got me thinking about one of my favorite topics—outliers.

Mainly because I am one. For those who don’t know: I’m tall—6‘9” tall. The world isn’t built for someone like me.

I spent a whole weekend sitting in 30+ cars just to find one I fit in. It became immediately clear which car companies designed their interiors for an outlier like myself. Ford, Honda and Toyota didn’t even have a car on their lot that I fit in comfortably. I ended up with a Volvo C30 a small two door hatchback. Which, when I tell people usually returns a surprised look, and a quick,

“You fit in that thing?”

Yep. The size of the car has little to do with it. It comes down to basic combination of dash/steering column layout and seat positioning. It’s inherently a design problem. Volvo was thinking of an outlier (myself) without sacrificing quality for everyone else. In fact, it’s a better design because of it. It’s not just that there’s more space for me, but they took the extra time on all the little things in the interior. There’s a floating console and a nearly clutter free dash. To be honest, I have no idea if by Volvo making their dash work for me truly caused these other design details of the interior to be better, but I’ve designed enough to be willing to bet it did. Their focus on making enough leg and head room for those like me spilled over into their design process as a whole.

It’s this focus on these outliers that make a design truly great. Making sure things are accessible for the blind or the deaf, adding in keyboard shortcuts so that it’s easier to browse through photos, or making that navigation highlight look clearer so a user doesn’t get lost.

Now these things on their own are valuable, but the collateral benefits are why you should do them. If you were designing a car, worrying about extra leg room might make you rethink the entire console. Making a design polished isn’t achieved by making it work for your mom or the average user. You end up with something average.

Make a design truly great for the outliers and you make the experience great for everyone.