This week, Joshua Brewer on the excellent 52 Weeks of UX wrote about Design for Delight. Brewer discusses these elements of delight as not just nice-to-haves, but as elements that can provide real value. Users may smile at some quirky feature, but when it works well, they also notice the extra bit effort that went into building a pleasant experience.
That means something–especially on sites like those Brewer found, where most are showcasing creativity (be sure to check out his examples).
Sites with a quirky, creative message (naturally) lend themselves to quirky, creative elements. It’s sometimes hard to see where elements like these could fit on sites where creative expression isn’t one of the goals–like government sites.
On the one hand, of course we want to delight our users. On the other, we wonder if, in attempting to delight, we instead could be alienating
But what makes elements like these “delightful” is not just that they’re cool–everyone is trying to do “cool,” but not everyone is delighting. No, what makes them delightful is that the design and content are working together to enhance a user’s experience. As Brewer says,
If the customer walks away feeling like there was a little extra attention paid to them, you can guarantee they will be back and most likely will tell their friends about it as well.
Whether guiding users to the content they need to complete a task or building trust through acute attention to detail, true “delightful elements” are employed with care. They are employed to guide users toward their purpose.
As content strategists, one of our jobs is to ensure that this purpose is clearly defined and communicated to all members of the team. At various points in the process, content strategists can also help identify opportunities for delight–places where users might be especially engaged by bits of extra detail.
Knowing where these opportunities are and the goals of users in those particular moments helps the designers, the UX team, the writers, and the developers ensure that delightful content and design elements emerge.
It’s never enough just to decide to make a site delightful. It’s a clear vision of the goals and opportunities, along with strong collaboration across functions, that makes it happen. That clear vision doesn’t happen without a well-defined content strategy.
And since these elements add value and aren’t just frivolous fun, no sites should be disqualified–or exempt–from striving for delight.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Scott Pierce, Clinton Forry, Rachel Parker, James Callan, Lyrica Copywriting and others. Lyrica Copywriting said: RT scottpierce RT @scarequotes : Part of #contentstrategyis increasing a site's delight quotient: http://bit.ly/aQFQ0C Gr8, @alcasey. [...]