Expertise

Not Evangelism

Detail Matters

Great experiences are often not explicable entirely by deconstructive analysis; they're more than the sum of their parts, so it's not simply a case of breaking the experience down into the components required to deliver the Great Experience.

Often, too, these components are small; very fine details that on their own are almost indefinable, seemingly too small to matter. But they do matter, all of those tiny details. Something so apparently trivial as the placement of a comma changes the meaning of a sentence (and an apostrophe, when misplaced, can enrage). To a writer or a poet, the capitalisation of a letter or the placement of whitespace is significant. Even to a child; there's a big difference between housework and homework.

Detail matters

User experience - and the particular variety of UX that we concern ourselves with here, that of websites - must, I am sure, acknowledge the importance of the small details. In digital interactions, lacking a human face and a ready smile to make up for minor transgressions we must be better than the real world. As one website among millions, we must stand out - or even aim for some of our processes to be forgettable because they are so natural and effortless.

Whether the detail is as small as the font we use, the correct spelling of our copy, or as large as the entire shopping and checkout process, the navigation, the information architecture of the website; many facets and layers contribute to the total experience for the user.

Detail does matter. In this blog I write about the matters of detail and how they contribute to delivering a great user experience.

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