# An Excellent User Experience

Building a first-class user experience is harder than
slapping a glitzy stylesheet on the face of your web app. An
excellent user experience is the culmination of:

- Visual design
- [Interaction design][1]
- [Information architecture][2]
- Component design
- Application development
- Performance tuning

## More Than Meets The Eye

<image-figure href="/img/ia-spectrum-of-user-experience.png"
src="/img/ia-spectrum-of-user-experience-square.png" alt="An
illustration of all the supporting functions that define the
user experience. A Venn diagram of three primary colors
representing business, technology, and design on a black
background." aspect="r1x1"><strong>The Spectrum of User
Experience</strong>  
&copy; 2009 Information Architects, Inc.<br /> <cite><a
href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/formforce/3663684287/">original
on Flickr</a></cite></image-figure>

This diagram is my favorite decomposition of the elements
that comprise user experience. It was made by [Oliver
Reichenstien][3] as a part of a series:

1. [UX Deliverables][4]
2. [UX Stress Fields][5]
3. [UX Spheres of Action][6]
4. [UX Core Values][7]

Two of them are featured in [an article][8]. Taken together
they are quite insightful.

## We Can Do Better
Design is a process not a result.

Throughout the life cycle of our products and services we
must continually refine their operation, appearance, and
functionality. To do otherwise is to ignore [our
commitment][9] to our patrons. We have a long way to go for
all of the six components mentioned above:

- The branding of our sites is inconsistent and the overall visual appeal is often lacking.
- There is little refinement in the interaction design of our sites.
Many of our applications navigate or operate oddly. User
testing and user feedback is largely, if not completely
absent.
- The information architecture of our sites leaves our patrons with either too little context or an unending morass of navigation.
- The functional scope of our projects is usually good for the first round of development.
However, we struggle to support the evolution of our sites
and services in later stages of their life cycle.
- The readability, stability, and programmatic tests of our application code leaves much to be desired.
- Performance tuning of our production applications is almost completely absent.
We cannot guarantee a speedy experience even if the patron
is on campus.

## What's Next
We have committed ourselves to "service excellence". To
fulfill this commitment we must make design a top priority
as we build the constellation of sites and applications that
make up a digital library. Many of the skills and methods
needed to do this are within our reach. What we need as a
team are [practices][10] that put the user experience at the
core of everything we do.

[1]:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interaction_design
[2]:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_architecture
[3]:  https://x.com/iA
[4]:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/formforce/3663696937
[5]:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/formforce/3664501594
[6]:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/formforce/3664507020
[7]:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/formforce/3664510680
[8]:  https://ia.net/topics/the-spectrum-of-user-experience-1
[9]:  /writing/service-excellence/
[10]: /writing/standards-and-practices/