Making Users Smile, Laugh, and Cry

A lot of our jobs are about designing ‘delightful experiences”, but what makes a user feel delight? As iOS developers we care for nice applications and good user experiences. Equally, we’ve also often talked about user centric design, and hence keep their goals and expectations in mind, while trying to achieve our business goals. With this talk however I’d like to take the discussion a bit further from onboarding and hamburger menus, and more towards designing/developing for human experiences. Human experience is, in my opinion, centered around fitting into a user’s daily tasks, moods, and lifestyle, with the goal to enhance them. As is often said nowadays, phones are an extension of our every day lives, and as apps demanding time and attention, we should make sure to do so in the most natural and cohesive ways. This means taking it further than platform affordances. Our apps shouldn’t just fit into the style of the device, and other apps similar, it should fit into a user’s every day life. In order to do so, we need to better understand people, their interactions with mobile, and the extent to which design can affect moods and perception.

This talk was recorded at AltConf 2015. Watch all the videos!