Institutional Knowledge

In his book Ambient Findability and SXSW session, Peter Morville, presented his user experience honeycomb that shows how user experience is shaped by a series of dynamic and interconnected qualities.

• Useful — To have the courage and creativity to ask whether our products are useful and be able to develop innovation solutions to make them more useful.
• Usable — Usability, ease of use, is necessary.
• Desirable — Image, identity, and brand are all parts of emotion design to keep in mind before sacrificing for efficiency.
• Findable — Build navigable sites that help users find what they’re looking for.
• Accessible — It’s the ethical and legally required thing to do.
• Credible — Design elements do influence whether or not a user will trust and believe the information presented.
• Valuable — The user experience must advance the mission of the organization.

So what purpose does this diagram serve? As mentioned above, it breakdown how Morville views the qualities that make up the user experience of a website. The advantage is to look at one of your existing sites or products through this honeycomb. It can be a conversation starter that’s a little different and more interesting than “How do we make this accessible?” or “How can we change the template?” While those are two pieces of the puzzle it’s not the whole puzzle. Taking a different approach to evaluating your site can lead to changes you might not have dreamed of.

The second advantage to using this model is that it affords you the opportunity to tackle a larger problem in more manageable chunks. Sure you might not be able to do a complete makeover of your site, but, for example, it might take that many resources to improve the findability of the most sought after content.

Challenge
The next time you tackle a web project, evaluate any existing site, or your own design, through the honeycomb matrix to see if you think it will create a positive or negative user experience.