Professional creativity deserves usability testings.

This article was first published on Medium on Nov 17, 2015

The value of art lays in the appreciation of its consumers. The more people enjoy looking at or listening to a piece of art, the higher its value as art is perceived. Most pieces of art, such as a drawn picture, a photograph or a musical composition can unfold their beauty without any further introductions or explanations.

Photo by David Travis on Unsplash

From a usability perspective, Interaction Design does not follow this rule. It requires some explanations or at least prior knowledge to unfold its beauty. People need to have some basic understanding on what to expect when they tap on a hamburger menu icon, how that differs from a three dot icon, what a spinning circle means, how to get from A to B.

Take instagram as an example: There is a heart and a chat icon under the photo. And in the bottom there is a heart inside a chat icon. How do they connect? I obviously have three ways of interacting with that specific picture, so what can I expect to find behind the three dots? What is the mailbox up there? Where am I inside the architecture? The icon in the center is blue, so that is the one which is active? No, I am “home”, indicated by the 1% darker grey.

Interaction design is art. But it needs usability testing with users, because it only unfolds its beauty in combination with a specific content in a specific context. Dear designers: Let the users judge your work, because they will spend more time with it than you have.