A variety of factors influence a user’s experience when they engage with an app. While much of it is outside of the developer’s control, there are many intention decisions to make when building databases. Prioritizing a user-centered development process helps set an interface up for successful deployment and use—but how do you do that? In this four-part series, we’ll explore some of the decisions developers have to make as they evaluate their database user interface and experience.

Who are you designing for?

The simple-yet-complex answer is end users. They’re frequently not who’s paying us, but end users are the most important stakeholder for your software design. Throughout the development process, they should also be the first priority—even if that competes with the desires of the stakeholders footing the bill.

When we as developers start a new project, we almost always begin with the back-end structure. Relationship graphs are constructed, layout created, and scripts put into place. Hence, we frequently work on the user interface last. While this is a logical progression for a variety of reasons, we must keep in mind that users almost exclusively use the application via the interface. What we work on last is what they use first and almost exclusively.

Before starting, keep in mind that early and on-going communication with the user base is vital. Instead of jumping in where you think best, discuss with your users to get a better understanding of their current situation. What’s presently working well? What’s difficult or doesn’t work? What features can be added to improve workflow? As you discuss with them, be forward-thinking about use cases and tools; leave room to develop them out in the future (or next week, depending on the client). This doesn’t mean to just leave space on the layout, but to employ a database structure that’s been created in such a manner that it can facilitate future growth. Build scripts with the mind they may expand over time, set-up your relationship graph to easily allow new tables, etc.

A cardinal sin of user interface design—yet found in far too many websites and applications—are dark patterns. A dark pattern is an intentional design that’s goal is to manipulate users into providing information or making a purchase they don’t otherwise intend to. Due to the nature of how they operate, they’re a bad business practice that fails to build trust with the consumer, and consequently can’t facilitate healthy, long-term relationships. A more in-depth look at dark patterns and how they work is available on our blog.

Key to remember throughout your development process is that while you can create a user interface, you can’t fully dictate a user’s experience. An interface is tangible (even if it’s done so in pixel format). However, experience is shaped by each person’s unique previous interactions, worldview, morals, etc. No two people are the same and consequently no two user experiences will be the same. Hence, the interface you create will be received in a different manner by each person who uses it. But while you cannot control what shapes their experience, you can be cognizant of it.

Additionally, while you can’t make everyone happy, we must balance that with the knowledge that everyone does matter. It’s common to consider a certain percentage of users as being negligible, but we believe that doesn’t matter. For example, as of March 2022, Facebook has approximately 2.9 billion active users. If a decision is made to change the product in a manner that negatively impacts just 5% of their active user base, that’s still 145 million people whose experience has been made worse. Obviously, it is impossible to have every decision positively impact every user. However, a cavalier attitude towards your users when their experience changes for the worse is detrimental for building trust with them.

Lastly, allow room for your users to change over time. Although we think of them being relatively permanent, some factors about our users can change such as their name, phone number, marital status, etc. On the other hand, some information users may grow to be more comfortable sharing over time, perhaps their religion, gender, or sexuality. Have the database set-up in such a manner that facilitates user change without jumping through five hoops and three uncomfortable conversations to do so.

Users must be our first priority and consequently at the forefront of our mind as we build out apps. By placing them in this important role, we’re better positioned to build successful user interfaces and databases that will work towards a positive user experience. Building on this conversation, we’ll explore what kind of development work we should be doing in the next part of this series.

PART 2: HOW WILL YOU DEVELOP?

PART 3: HOW DO YOU STRUCTURE CONTENT?

PART 4: HOW WILL THE INTERFACE LOOK?

PK Information is a FileMaker-certified development agency serving the Tampa Bay and Knoxville regions. We believe that great software can change everything. Do you need help prioritizing your end users to work towards a better user interface and experience? Contact us today!

SUBSCRIBE

Sign up with your email address to receive future posts like this directly to your inbox.