A More Mauvy Shade of Pinky Russet

Design is iterative, right? While creating part two of the two-part “characteristics” diagram (part one: The Essential Characteristics of User Experience), I realized that it was actually a three-part diagram and that what I had created first, was actually last! So now it reads:

1. An introduction of “characteristics” and “principles”. (pdf | jpg)
2. The characteristics. (pdf | jpg)
3. The principles – formerly part one, “essential characteristics”. (pdf | jpg)

My thanks to Rob Weening, one of my colleagues at work, for helping me see this “re-frame”.  His flash of inspiration was that the characteristics are the building blocks of an experience (the “what”) and principles are how an experience is put together (the “how”).  The dodgy DNA analogy in the diagrams, however, is all my fault.

P.S.  Dave reminded me with his comment that the ten characteristics are almost certainly not an exhaustive list, they’re just a start.

There has been some discussion in the past few months about establishing a “language of critique” for user experience design. Jesse James Garrett may have started it with his closing plenary at the 2009 IA Summit in Memphis, it filled the IAI and IxDA mailing lists for a while and Erin Malone and James Melzer, among others, have blogged about it.

Here is my contribution (see the pdf), yes its a diagram. Its the first half of a two part diagram called “The Characteristics of User Experience”, this first part being the essential characteristics – the second part, coming soon, will be the secondary (or auxiliary, or periphery, I haven’t decided yet) characteristics.

Useful, Usable and Desirable have been touted for a long time as the hallmarks of a “good” user experience but they’re too generic and abstract. I think the five characteristics in this diagram are essential to any user experience being “good”. I’d love comments to stress test this!