Squared Eye Notebook

It’s Not Just The Little Things It’s the Invisible Things

If you haven’t already been following Josh Brewer and Josh Porter at 52weeksofux.com, you need to start now. It’s a great read on some of the realities, questions, and problems of User Experience design, both on the web and in the natural.

The topic of a recent post at 52 Weeks of Ux had me all riled up and excited. The article regards one of my favorite areas of UX — receipts. Please go have a read of Brewer’s post “It’s The Little Things” and delight yourself with a great insight into some ways we need to think in real-life terms about our web designs.

I took Josh Brewer’s ideas a tad further. Below is my ideal receipt from my favorite bar in Greenville, Barleys Taproom.

Full Size Image

I’ll take you through my decisions:

1. More room to breathe, so I know what’s the most important thing on the receipt!
Help people scan. Scanning cannot happen without empty space that acts like a good comma in a sentence. Let people take a visual breath.

2. Help your customers make good decisions simply.
I’ve added suggested gratuity and their totals at 15% and 20%. This allows the customer to relax. They don’t have to do the math. You’ve done it for them. Make it easy on them. Now some customers don’t like having a “suggestion” made to them, so any implementation like this would need to be judged based on the kind of clientele the business receives and whether or not that clientele would appreciate the help or not.

In addition, I’ve extrapolated the totals from these suggestions to the total amount owed, so that the user, again, does not need to do any math. The word “suggested” could be changed to suit the audience and what will make them feel helped rather than nudged.

3. Place primacy at the forefront.
Let the user know what the most important piece is. The total, in this case, is what we all need to walk away agreeing about, so make it the more emphasized area in the receipt. Guide the user. People don’t want to think, they want to do.

4. Let me sign the dang thing!
You’re asking me to sign the receipt, so give me some flippin’ room to sign it. Get out of the way. I HATE when any signature area requires me to reduce my name to a mouse-size John Hancock. Give me a full-size line I can get my name on.

5. Design the Invisible.
The receipt is one of the last interactions I’ll have with the restaurant at the end of the night, second only to the host or hostess opening the door for me as I leave and reminding me they love to see my face. In this last valuable interaction, make it count. For Barleys, I know they value their staff, and I know that they want people to go big on their beer purchases. They have a great opportunity to provide each customer with a moment of concept, a moment of story, a moment to learn more about Barleys, and re-engage the next time.

Grocery stores do this with coupons, but they miss the point. The opportunity isn’t just for more money to be spent, its for lives to be enriched with humor, insight, philosophy, or story. The legacy of the fortune cookie has nailed this! I love fortune cookies because I love to add “in bed” to the end of them. It’s hilarious. I read out “You’ll have magnificent success and people will praise you + in bed” to my wife, and we all laugh or wince with embarrassment, and a moment of connection is made with chinese food and fun. Brilliant!

Taking web to the invisible
In my opinion, this is what is missing in web design more than other areas of UX. We’ve been propelled by technology as this brand new industry takes off and grows rapidly. We’ll never outgrow the natural, where people still love relationship, connection, and the social play of wit and tenderness. This is what I want Squared Eye to be known for. I don’t want to design websites for the rest of my life, I want to help businesses succeed. I believe they will succeed when the experiences we’ve designed for their customers make tangible connections that lead to better relationships. Shahbow!