Consider for a minute the ‘home’ and ‘compose new tweet’ buttons in Twitter’s new app(s).
There’s something more substantive going on here than just detailed visual design. The birdhouse and quill raise those standard metaphors to a level that takes into account the ethos of the product itself. They’re right in what I think of as the delight layer of UX. It’s the stuff that has little to no effect on utility, but enriches the app in a way that wouldn’t quite work with any other product.
In other words, this layer doesn’t necessarily make the product any easier to use – but it contains cues, markers and behaviors that are almost intangible, yet endow the product with unique experiential qualities.
I’ll leave the rest of the app for others to review/criticize/praise, but in my mind this is a brilliant, nontrivial touch.
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5 insightful responses to The Delight Layer of UX
Aaron, please change the ordering of the pics, since you reference them twice as “‘home’ and ‘compose new tweet’ buttons” and “birdhouse and quill.”
I do agree that what they’ve done with their latest iteration has a certain sense of enrichment to it, in that they are providing more of a product less of a service. There’s a small problem with the imagery in the birdhouse, it showing two black ‘holes,’ one big and one small. The smaller hole would represent the perch, which would extend out, therefore I would expect a different coloring than the one that is designated to go into the birdhouse, perhaps a lower opacity blue. But I do the connection of the quill with supposedly the feather of a bird, the Twitter mascot; there’s something nice about that.
Great observations.
“this layer doesn’t necessarily make the product any easier to use”
Form over function then?
@Rogier Form after function!
@Matt C. Good catch. Done.
Aaron, your twitter home metaphor is absolutely genius. It is context sensitive. It respects user expectation and nicely play with metaphors.
Usually quill work very nice as a metaphor of writing. But in a context of birds and twittering such a feather in “new tweet” button remind me more of a plucked goose & such. You have so much care in the nesting box, that quill seems agressive in this birdy theme.
Anyway, your buttons seems to be working much better than in the original UI. Thank you for focusing on such a nice details.