1) The user experience of the feature is designed with what you want the user to do for your site’s goals & objectives, not the user’s.

2) The site is designed to bring users to the site (traffic generation), not for them to actually fulfill their needs.

3) The feature is designed to make use of the site or business’s competitive advantage WITHOUT regard to what the consumer wants and needs. This is often the case with companies with cool technology that has no user value.

I thought of why we often as product managers or designers create features that commit these sins, and I think some of the blame is on the PRD process where often it begins with “Objectives” and “Goals” that are site-centric, like increase conversion by 25%, collect 100,000 reviews, etc.

I think that we talk so much about “user-centric” design but never actually implement it, because we are often bound by these site-centric goals and objectives, much more than actually thinking about the user.

Obviously, sites are often businesses, and it is natural that there is some conflict. But the other part of this phenomenon is that pure user-centric improvements are harder to quantify – it may show up in the elusive “retention-metrics” but you often have to wait a few months to see the fruits of a lot of these metrics.

So we often commit these sins, because we improve things that can be quantified – its “metrics-driven” – but we lose a lot in this process.

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Originally uploaded by emilychang

So simple, yet so elegant. Only one color, but use of shade, form & function all come together to deliver in functionality as well as elegance. Websites should be designed this way.