How Good UX Is like Good Chocolate
A little over a year ago, I started my journey learning how to make bean to bar chocolate. Bean to bar means you are actually making the chocolate from scratch, from cacao beans that come from a belt of tropical regions around the Equator. You must roast the beans, crack the beans, remove the shells, refine, conch, temper, mold, wrap... It’s a long process, but well worth the results – smooth, clean, delicious, satisfying chocolate, made exactly how I want to eat it (which happens to be 75% cacao content and higher, and NO refined cane sugars/sugar alcohols/soy/dairy). During the last year I’ve spent countless hours, days and weeks making batches of chocolate, and during that time I’ve decided that good chocolate is indeed much like good user experience.
It’s smooth.
All the time spent grinding down the beans and refining, gives chocolate the consistently smooth, creamy mouthfeel we expect. Each square of chocolate in a bar, and every bar from a maker should have that same consistent high level of quality. If every bite tasted different, or if every bar was different, the person would have no trust in that brand. It’s doubtful they would buy it again.
The same is true for good UX – we strive for a consistent, seamless user experience! If a user is viewing your website from their desktop, then they jump to their phone, and then finish a task from their tablet, it should all feel like the same company. If a user engages with your brand on a social platform, sees a print ad, picks up your product, reads the packaging, or gets one of your promos, it all needs to be part of a consistent brand experience. This smooth, consistent experience is enjoyable, and will reinforce brand awareness and will ultimately build brand equity.
It’s simple.
The beauty of making your own chocolate is using whatever ingredients you want and not using anything you don’t want. Insider info>> supermarket chocolate only needs to have 11% cacao content by law and also includes gross things like milk powders, fake vanilla, soy lecithin! Making my own chocolate means I can keep it clean and simple to let the cacao bean shine with absolutely nothing extra that isn’t necessary.
Good UX is also about keeping things clean and simple, with as few distractions as possible. Crazy color palettes, multiple fonts, competing calls to action, different ‘voices’, industry jargon, unclear information hierarchy – these things will confuse and irritate your users. Clean graphics and design along with clarity of purpose and message, repeated consistently, will create stronger brand credibility and trust.
It’s delicious.
Who would want to eat chocolate if it was just edible, if all it gave us was caloric energy? We eat chocolate because it’s absolutely delicious. And for many of us, chocolate is an even bigger experience that begins when we first see the bar on the shelf, marvel at the beautiful packaging, open it and get our first whiff, or let a square melt in our mouth and our minds conjure up words like, “fig, cherry, fudge, floral…” Good chocolate is magic.
A user experience that is just edible is also something that no one would want to experience again. It’s meh. It may be usable and follow best practices but there’s no magic, no personality, no connection, no value, nothing unique to it. Good UX provides opportunities to deliver something above and beyond what a user expects. It’s something that isn’t just functional and without any bugs, it’s amazing! It solves users’ problems, brings tremendous value, makes something easier for them, is smart and anticipates needs. It can wow and delight. Just like that delicious chocolate bar, a satisfied, delighted customer will return for more. And they will tell their friends.
It pays off.
When someone sees a handcrafted chocolate bar in gorgeous packaging sitting on a shelf, and they pick it up and start reading the package, there’s an expectation of what it’s going to taste like. That entire interaction along with the brand promises made on the wrapper, hopefully pay off when the bar gets opened and enjoyed. It should taste just as delicious, if not more, as I thought it was going to before!
In UX, we are also very interested in what happened before someone lands on your site. It tells us what they were expecting and then we can ask ourselves, did we deliver on that? Good UX ensures that wherever a user lands after clicking on one of your emails or from your Instagram, the landing page delivers on the promises made – in terms of design, content, messaging, visuals, interactions - the entire user experience!
Ready to make your UX smooth, simple and delicious? Click here to see how I can help with just that.