“Time-saving designs” save people time by offering recommendations, personalization, and easy-to-consume content. Why is time-saving design important? And how can designers structure content to focus on brevity, easy consumption, and instant gratification for today’s digital users?
Personalization Wins
According to recent research on Personalization Trends, among the top benefits of personalization you’ll find positive effects on:
- The brand-customer relationship, such as increased visitor engagement (55%), improved customer experience (55%), and improved brand perception (39%)
- The organization’s bottom line, in the form of increased conversion rates (51%) and increased lead generation/customer acquisition (46%).
- A direct increase in revenue, according to reports by 89% of U.S. marketers.
With these benefits it’s noted that the race is on–users nowadays have higher expectations for actionable and relevant information.
With a greater prevalence of virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa, Google Home, etc, there is a rising bar for speed and personalization in our digital products.
Concepts to Keep in Mind
The Z Pattern: without much text, our eye tends to start scanning from top left to top right, then diagonally down to the bottom left, stopping at the bottom right. Structuring content with a visible call to action increases the visibility and opportunity for signups/purchase.
The F Pattern: with text-heavy designs, our eye tends to scan across the top, from left to right, then down the left, searching for what we want to know. On finding something relevant, we’ll scan across to the right. Emphasize navigation items and important call-outs aligning with the F Pattern so it’s easier for users to find when scanning a text-heavy page.
Card-based designs: cards (used in popular task management/feeds/discovery experiences) communicate quick chunks of diverse content. This offers what users are looking for in a digestible format and quantity.
Return experiences: one consideration for time-saving design is in making a return experience easier for the user. For example, using cross-browsing data, an e-commerce or entertainment site might suggest relevant offers and recommendations.
Netflix uses A/B testing to gauge the effectiveness of various thumbnails. The resulting experience combines the insights from data scientists working with UX Designers.
Conclusion
Today’s users are geared toward time-saving designs. UX Designers today have the opportunity to craft experiences that are efficient to navigate and surface content of greater relevance. They can collaborate with their engineering counterparts and utilize relevant user data to get there. In turn, time-saving designs will have a measurable (positive) impact on business metrics.
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