Martha Stewart’s Thoughtful UX
My day-to-day usually consists of thinking about how a person is going to experience something we develop. I design the concepts, the flow and the visuals of what a person will come into contact with.
At a high level, this requires understanding:
1. What is important to the user?
2. How will the user accomplish what they need?
3. What context the user is in?
These key problems must be solved to create a great UX. All of this is well and good, but what can we do to take it beyond a great UX and make it a thoughtful one? I wanted to share with you an example I found while making some cookies…
The Use Case
I have been a huge fan of Marthastewart.com for quite a while. I don’t use the craft part of their business much, but some of their recipes have been the best I’ve ever tried. I have lots of them as my go-to recipes, most of which I have saved into Evernote. (If you don’t use Evernote you should be, check it out.) They have a great iPad app that is really nice to use as a digital cookbook. I decided to make some Chewy Chocolate-Gingerbread Cookies for a party a friend was throwing. They are great for the holidays and just so delicious. To my surprise, I had only saved half of the recipe. So I went onto Marthastewart.com to get the info I desperately needed!
Problems Solved
Marthastewart.com went through a redesign, as their site is now responsive. (Problem #3 solved) It was a nice surprise and a delight to see how well the content was laid out. The recipe was the focal point of the page and really easy to see how many I was going to be making. (Problem #1 solved) Since I only needed a few of the ingredients, I was looking specifically for that content. Which was also very easy to find with their detailed type design and color palettes. (Problem #2 solved)
The Thoughtful Part
I love to bake, but I’m not as organized as I should be. In the past, I have skipped ingredients or have put twice as much of something in because I forgot I had already added it. (Who hasn’t, right 😉 ) What delighted me even more about the page on Martha’s site was the addition of a pretty simple approach to somewhat of a complex problem. The recipe page was now equipped with checkboxes for each ingredient. I thought to myself, ‘this is really going to save me some headache’. Not only did it solve my problem, it was a thoughtful approach that allowed me to interact with their site on a different level.
Thank You
Great user experience solve problems. Thoughtful user experiences solve those problems, but also helps users work and live better. So thank you Martha, thank you for saving me the pain of all those headaches.
