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Pleasure Centric Design
for web

Why user centric design doesn't always lead to the best websites, and what we can do about it

What's this all about?

A lot of people who make websites (mostly in the information architecture and usability fields) aren't going to like what I've got to say, because what I'm going to say goes against one of the key maxims of web design - that the opinion of the user is everything. Yes, it's true that thinking about the users is important when we design websites, but by focusing all our attention on what these hypothetical users want or expect we often lose site of the bigger picture. Of course we want to make users happy. But we also want to make great websites. Ultimately we have to strike a compromise - and by following the traditional route of user centric design, that compromise all too often falls on the side of a lowest common denominator, one-size-fits-all, OK-for-everyone-but- great-for-no-one site. We need a few new ways of thinking about the design of websites that open the door for innovation and greatness, while still satisfying as many users as possible.

I think we can achieve this, by utilising what I'm calling Pleasure Centric Design.


Where we've come from

Tim Berners-Lee did a good job when he invented the web. It turned out to be one of, if not the, defining inventions of the late twentieth century. Around one in seven of the entire earth's population has seen a website at least once in their life. And it's become that widespread in barely fifteen years. It's come that far because it's a flexible technology, based on open and evolving standards. But it's not just the technology that's powered this revolution - it's the people who have been guiding it.

Because, though the web generally looks quite good now, at one point it was a real mess. Back in the mid-nineties, everyone wanted a part of it, even though they weren't quite sure what the point was. And so the first wave of sites were built to no overall plan, with no budget, for an unknown audience, to simply say "Here I am! I'm online!" Sure, there were pockets of geek users carrying over conversations from old BBS systems and the pre-web internet, who were actually using the web to do something. But when businesses were involved, they simply didn't have a clue.

And that was fine for a while. But then some of the more future-thinking business started to ask the most important question of the web era - "What is this thing actually for, anyway?" And second to that - "Can we make any money from it?"

They looked at the web, with its mix of text (albeit hyper-text) and pictures, and realised it looked a lot like magazines. This was just new media after all. So they decided that the web was primarily a content delivery system. And not just any content delivery system, but one that was low cost (as in, no printing costs), could be run to an infinitely flexible publishing schedule, and potentially reach a worldwide audience. And so the war cry for this era was "Content is king!" Create a lot of great content, put it online, and the audience will come. And where there's an audience, there's advertising revenue. Simply slap some banner ads on the top of articles, and the money will roll in.

But it didn't work out according to plan. Even though some of these sites had a ton of great content, the audience weren't happy, and would often desert what looked like a winning site after only a few months. What was wrong?


Where we are now

It took a second wave of innovators to start to sort out the mess of the mid-nineties web. People like Jakob Nielson, et al, who came in and told businesses why the audience wasn't satisfied. They pointed out that users were confused by organic and obscure site structure, inconsistent page design, untested navigation menus, long and unscannable content, and so on. They created the idea that by putting content first, and not the opinions of users, the businesses had made sites that might have been worthy of users' attention, but simply weren't usable. Even if users were interested in the content, if they couldn't use the site properly, they wouldn't bother returning to it.

It was worse than that though. Not only were many sites not optimally usable (or user friendly), a lot weren't even accessible. Some people had disabilities, such as being partially sighted, which meant that the web wasn't as easy to use. Some people had incompatible browsers, or a different OS, that displayed pages in a different way. And so on.

So there were a lot of issues in the mid-nineties web to sort out. At the most basic level, sites had to be made accessible. It was vital that as many people could access a site as possible, including the minority with disabilities or esoteric browsers.

After you were certain that a site was accessible, you could worry about the next step - making it usable. This involved sorting through all the usability issues, concerning consistency in page design and navigation, making the site structure obvious and visible, and providing help in as many places as possible. The basic principle behind making sites usable was that users should never feel challenged - the design should be based on previously agreed on conventions, with no learning curve. If the users have to think about the navigation or site at all, then the site has failed. The content was important - the site itself should be unobtrusive, merely a means to an end.

Finally, if you had made sure your site was accessible and usable, it would be wise to check that it was actually useful. After all, users should have a reason to visit your site.

What the usability gurus were saying was largely just common sense - if you want to make the most of your website, make sure everyone can use it - and it needed to be said. It was just fortunate for the people involved that they were around when they were, because it meant that they could become influential figureheads, guiding otherwise clueless businesses into the internet age.


Where we should be

Ten years on, and the usability gurus are still around, and are still charging a lot of money for their services. A cynic would suggest that this gives them no reason to challenge the status quo, to question the piles of dogmatic usability guidelines that their business is built on. Of course, small pieces of this dogma do get discarded. Occasionally we'll see the recommendation to use navigation scheme A be replaced with one to use navigation scheme B, for example. But when it comes to the big picture, the questions about the validity of user centric design as a methodology are never raised.

Which is what we should be doing now. So let's ask the question - does user centric design always result in the best site possible?

I don't believe it does.

Why not?

Primarily because, in following the strictest interpretation of user centric design, we (as people that build websites) defer our creative vision to two greater powers - an amorphous and ill-defined group of people we call the users, and their unelected spokesmen, the usability gurus. We know what we want to build. But we constantly have to second guess what these hypothetical users want, and when in doubt, we always choose to believe in the worst case scenario (on the advice of usability gurus) - that there are a pool of users out there who are virtually unable to manoeuvre a mouse, but need to use our site.

So we make compromises, often against our better judgement, because something we want to do is contradicted by some statistic somewhere. We stick to established conventions, because we don't want to risk upsetting any users by giving them something new, even if we think the new thing is better. We patronise the majority of experienced web users to cater to the novices. We build the same sites, again and again, rather than innovating and facing the wrath of the usability gurus, for breaking guideline number #3173 in usability report 47. We have the design of sites dictated to us, rather than us leading the way. We work back to front. And we end up building mundane sites for it.

So what should we do?

Well, first we should stop paying so much attention to the usability gurus. Yes, they've been a vital factor in ensuring the web has been brought up to the standard it is today. And we should be thankful to them for that. But we shouldn't let them design our sites for us. They're just not the right people for the job. They're problem solvers rather than creators, telling us what we can't do, rather than what would be good to do. They're consultants, not designers. Fixers, not builders. Scientists, not artisans.

And we shouldn't let the users run our lives either. Sure, they're important. But maybe, just maybe (and here's a piece of real heresy for you) we know better than them about how to make great websites.

So instead, we, the people that build websites, need to work from a new direction, according to a new principle, a principle that allows for the development of truly great design.


Pleasure Centric Design

So then, how should we design and build sites? Well let's go back to the basics. In traditional user centric design, we worry about making sure users can access the site, then making sure they can use it, and then finally hope that the site itself is useful. Basically we put the users first, and the site second. These levels form a pyramid - 95% of people should find the site accessible, 85% should find it usable, and hopefully 60% will find it useful (to use some fabricated statistics for the sake of argument). At the top of the pyramid sit the happy users. The lower levels filter the higher ones, so that if someone finds the site accessible, and usable, and useful, then you've successfully got a satisfied user.

But aren't we still missing something? After all, a site can be accessible, usable and useful, and still not actually be used by people. Imagine two sites that offer equally useful services in the same area, that are equally accessible and equally usable (an increasingly common scenario). How does the user choose between them?

Well, it's simple - they choose whichever site is the most pleasurable to use. Making sites pleasurable is the top of the pyramid - it's the users who find the site pleasurable that will ultimately be the most satisfied users - but is often nothing more than an afterthought. Which is strange, because when it comes down to it, pleasure is actually one of the key motivational factors in our lives, not just online, but in every aspect of what we do. So why don't we consider it more when we build sites?

It seems that designing sites to be pleasurable isn't on the agenda because it's hard to quantify what pleasure is, or what makes something pleasurable. There are criteria we can use to reliably measure how usable sites are, based on how many tasks users can achieve, on the site. But pleasure is more complicated than that - it's a complex interaction of object and subject, and can't reliably be predicted with a set of statistics and guidelines.

And there's something else about pleasure. It's not just based around someone's experience of a thing. If something is considered usable, it's because people found it easy to use. There's no inherent quality of usability in things. So in traditional user centric design, websites can't be inherently good. There's no such thing as a good website, only one that fulfils a particular task-based success metric with a defined group of users.

If however, something is pleasurable, it's at least in part because there's something inherently pleasurable about that thing. Of course there's a subjective quality to pleasure. So naturally users still form part of the equation. But pleasure is caused by a pleasurable thing. And so a website can be inherently good, beyond the opinions of users.

It's not such a revolutionary concept to suggest that something like a website can have inherent qualities of goodness. After all, the history of art wouldn't have progressed at all if every painting was merely judged on it's utility, according to some sort of audience analysis success metric. OK, so a painting is art, and a website is design, right? Not an entirely fair comparison.

So what about cars? These are machines, like websites, designed for a purpose. But how often do we hear people talk about a beautiful car? Which is the better car, a Volvo, or an Aston Martin?

And so that's what we should focus on - building pleasurable things. Building beautiful things, great things. Does building pleasurable, great things mean that we'll build websites that aren't usable? Of course not, because pleasure and beauty encompass fitness to purpose. Designers in product design understand this, so why don't we?

And, going back to the top of the pyramid for a second, pleasure trumps everything else. Users will work their way through sites that are less than optimally usable, if the site is pleasurable. Ultimately, if a site is pleasurable, it doesn't matter if it's not totally accessible, optimally usable, or useful at all - the user will be happy with the experience, by definition.

So our priority shouldn't be usability, or the opinions of the users, it should be building great sites - pleasurable sites. Prioritising the top of the pyramid and working down is the basics of pleasure centric design.


User Centric Design versus Pleasure Centric Design

Of course, it would be foolish to completely discard all the good that user centric design does for the design of sites. Sometimes we're working to a brief where user centric design is the right approach - where we don't understand the needs of users, it makes sense to take a lead from them. Where we're working on a site that needs to be 100% accessible (like government sites), then we can work from users' needs first. But even in these cases, we should be proactive about pursuing good, pleasurable design, beyond simply fulfilling requirements.

So when it comes to pleasure centric design, it should build on all the learnings about best practices, useful conventions, how users interact with sites, and so on. But it's about a reprioritisation. Instead of the traditional view, that web professionals need to be kept on a leash by usability guidelines, lest we do things completely wrong, it's about having a degree of faith in everyone who builds sites. We've got designers who've been designing for web for ten years, and understand the difference between print and web. We've got copywriters who know how to optimise copy for use online. We've got coders who can code to strict WAI accessibility standards. We've got IAs who can visualise sites in a variety of ways, fitting them to different forms. And most importantly, we've got a lot of people who truly understand the web, with a lot of good ideas waiting to be made.

A final analogy

If web design was the automobile industry, we'd spend all our time worrying about how to design cars for people that can't drive. We'd ask them question after question about where to put the pedals, where the steering wheel should go, and how far back the seat should be. We'd end up with an awful car. And they'd still get in it and crash.

Instead of that, why not say that we actually have a fairly good idea about what a car should look like. And we've got some ideas about how we can make one that's even better. So let's concentrate on making a better car. Then, if anyone wants one, well, if they've passed their driving test, they can take it for a test drive.

In other words, build a great product, and the users will come to you.



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PS. Is this a gross mischaracterisation of the good people who've toiled in the usability field for the last ten years? Almost certainly. Is it worth it if we start thinking about how to make better sites? Definitely.