I recently stumbled upon the image above. I initially agreed, since it’s a common conception that User Experience is about removing barriers (like shortening the path) between users (in this case pedestrians) and outcomes (get to their destination). But after a few seconds something made me feel uncomfortable with that conception, which is the notion that User Experience is about making the easiest way the right way of doing things. Clearly the “design” from the image above failed to do.In the image below, we can identify the path that individuals have forged in order to avoid the boom gate, these trails are called desire lines, which follows user’s perceived path of least resistance between their given situation and their desired goal or outcome.
Considering that desire lines, are usually an output of user-research, the image could be relabeled like:
From here we could use the image above (get user data) to redefine the design by making a "low-fidelity wireframe".
And now, we can say that User Experience is a more suitable term for the series of images rather than the original image. Often people tend to forget that User Experience is an iterative process for design refinement rather than a single output.
The odds that users would use the path that has been “wireframed” and may drive some unexpected user behavior. As user experience designers it is our job to keep an eye open to spot these kinds of behaviors and to adapt our designs accordingly.Some minutes before posting this, I asked my fellow UX friend @sbcolyer in a mocking way:
why would they even put that in the first place?
Taking this UX epiphany one step further, he mentioned that the whole purpose of such a gate is to force people to look both sides of the road by making them walk through the gate (which makes me think that they only did half the job, as the other side doesn't have the gate). But, if we keep that "business" goal in our heads, the proposed design might achieve the same outcome, or even improve it, as the original gate might not get used at all.To wrap this up, kudos to the OP of the image, as s/he made me feel that UX and its understanding are starting to grow in people's heart, and to be honest, it did make me laugh.
