What are the qualities of great user experiences?

Great user experiences are desirable because they result in positive outcomes for the people who have them and the organisations that provide them.

However different people will have great experiences of products and services for very different reasons such as:

• Their own personal circumstances
• Their personal perception of the experience itself
• How it compares to other experiences they have had in the past

This makes it hard to ensure that people have consistently great experiences presenting a real problem for the organisations that provide them.

So individual experiences are hugely subjective, but what is consistent are the ‘qualities’ of the experiences that people tell us that they value the most.

As a designer my instinct is to take things apart, see how they work and then put them back together in ways that improves them.

It got me thinking - can you take a ‘great experience’ apart to find out what it is made of and how it works?

To do this I thought about all the things I regularly hear users say in research sessions that felt like evidence of them having a great experience.

When working on mental health services for the NHS for example, I heard people saying things like ‘I could easily speak to someone if I wanted to’, ‘I knew I could speak openly’ and ‘I could access the system whenever I needed to’ as things that were really important to them having a great experience.

So in this example in order to provide a great experience, mental health services need to have qualities such as being ‘communicative’, ‘trustworthy’ and ‘easy to access’.

This got me thinking about what else I’ve repeatedly heard from users in research sessions over the years about the qualities they value the most from their best product and service experiences.

People have great user experiences when products and services are:

The qualities of experiences that make them feel easy to use include them being:

The qualities of experiences that help to solve our problems include them being:

The qualities of experiences that make them feel like they are professionally run include them being:

The qualities of experiences that make our lives better include them being:

The qualities of experiences that do no harm include them being:

The qualities of experiences that make them feel like they are on our side include them being:

Here's the full list of all 100 qualities of great user experiences in a Miro board (password = experiencequalities) and a Google Doc.

My list isn’t an exhaustive list!

Your product or service offering is unique and will undoubtedly have its own unique qualities that won't be listed above.

It's also important to acknowledge that some of these qualities will undoubtedly be more important than others to your users given their personal circumstances.

The trick is to work out which qualities are the most important to them and to what extent your users feel that you are offering them.

By optimising the most important qualities you can ensure that people will have the best possible experience when using your products and services.

To do this you need to answer these important questions:

• To what extent does the experience you offer have the qualities that are most important to your users?
• What qualities do your users feel are missing from the experience you offer them today?
• Where should you focus your efforts to improve your products and service experiences that will lead to the best outcomes for your users?

Do drop us a line to chat out how we can help you find the answers!