How to draw a Good Enough user experience

Last night I got to spend a few hours drawing out ideas with the awesome folks who comprise San Diego’s UX Speakeasy community. Well, actually, THEY were the ones drawing out ideas… picking up markers and drawing out icons that could clarify and visually represent terms involved with the UX practice. And while some terms converted into icons quite easily, others… well, not so much! It was a fascinating exercise, sparking great insights and conversations, and leaving my mind abuzz for hours afterwards.

This morning when I woke up, those drawings and conversations sparked some thoughts about how I would draw “user experience.” So, begging the indulgence of the UX Speakeasy community, here’s my belated contribution to last night’s conversation:

Here’s one way how to draw a Good Enough user experience:

Three (and a half) Tips:

When representing a complex idea, go for the minimum essential components of that idea. In this case, in order to have a user experience, you need a user and an experience. But how do you represent that experience? Well, it seems to me that an experience comes from interacting with a “thing” in such a way that it evokes a response or reaction in the user. And this is where things can get hairy, because you can try and represent myriad options or facets to this concept: what “thing” is the user interacting with? Which senses are involved? What sort of reaction are we seeking to elicit?

Remember, this is the Good Enough version of a user experience. So I chose to draw the concept using broad strokes: a user experience is a user having an interaction with a thing that elicits a positive or negative emotional response, of which the user either wants more or less of the experience.

Phew, that was wordy! But you probably see what I’m getting at…

When representing a component in a complex idea, again, go for minimal detail. The “thing” our user is interacting with could be ANYTHING really. It could be a mobile device, it could be a store’s website, it could be a book or a dining experience! By representing the “thing” in an ambiguous manner, that star spark thingie can hold the space to be any and all of the “things” that user could interact with.

When representing a complex idea, feel free to draw out relationships between things. The “interaction” component of the user experience is a great example of this. This Good Enough drawing focuses on two levels of interaction: the user having the direct interaction experience with the “thing,” and the emotional/psychological result of that interaction. Arrows are used to represent that direct interaction between the user and the “thing,” and a larger feedback arrow is used to represent the emotional/psychological interaction with the experience at large.

Here’s the half-tip: the circle-with-a-slash-through-it “No” symbol is a great way to communicate the lack or absence of something… but which way does the slash go??? Here’s how I keep it straight: remember the N before you draw the “No” symbol. The slash in the circle goes in the same direction as the diagonal line in your capital N.

… and that’s it! By identifying the minimum core components of a larger idea, you can capture something fairly complex in just a few pen strokes.

What does YOUR user experience look like? Draw yours up, Tweet it out to @jeannelking #goodenough, and let’s interact!

Want to have fun drawing AND inspire others to pick up the pen at the same time? Got something you wish you could draw, but you’re not sure how to approach it? Tweet your drawing or idea to @jeannelking and tag it with #goodenough: it could be featured in an upcoming “how to draw good enough” blog post!

Looking forward to seeing what you draw forth!

How to draw a Good Enough user experience

Here’s one way how to draw a Good Enough user experience:

Three (and a half) Tips:

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