A Great Experience requires a Great Team
The best experiences elevate the mundane to the joyous.
It emerges between that obscure fissure of efficiency and extra elbow grease; without rationalising it people can sense that scintilla of love teams put into products.
One of the best examples possessing this type of harmony is Virgin America’s slick, bespoke booking process. It’s focused, simple and beautiful. A total rewrite of the traditional potpourri of agonising form fields and date pickers of yore.
Their UX is like the Stradivarius of the online booking world. It plays a classic tune quite like no other.
Lets say I am booking a debaucherous New Years in Las Vegas. A beat after I’ve confirmed my journey, the sticky purple header nonchalantly quips “Repent before you land in Sin city”.
This copy enriches the surrounding design elements. Only a few seconds into the journey and something as ubiquitous as the header is rather cheekily grinning through its pearly Gotham teeth.
It’s an inviting repartee of engagement. Each action returns a exuberant response on the user’s involvement.
As I choose my bookend dates the friendly giant header reiterates my selection and in almost wing-man like fashion comments “looks good”.
It’s facilitates helpful and affirmative journey feedback, tidily encapsulated in the sturdy purple bar.
Already, we can detect that Virgin America’s online DNA is a bit different to the rest of its competitors. While it retains familiar ingredients of dropdowns and date pickers, they have stripped out rustic clutter for the sake clarity.
For instance, what is striking about the re-design is that there are no photos.
No photos. Think about that for a minute.
It’s like expecting change and being handed blank coins.
Feels weird, doesn’t it?
The above could be a number of currencies. Its weight, soft lustre, and geometry feel familiar, but the absence of detail has taken away that visual insurance for our eyes.
However this doesn’t indicate that its unsuccessful, its just not conventional. We’re not used to it — yet.
We can glean some accurate order value by examining other elements in relation to each other. For instance, the bottom left coin we can infer is the highest denomination of the bunch, by virtue of its size, zig-zag edge and silver-ness.
Likewise, in Virgin America’s online route map, non standard iconography replaces the standard dotted lines and pindrops on a map, and quite successfully. Think two gay walrus programmers lounging around the San Francisco bay area.
Work and Co have reworked iconic and created something that taps into our collective cultural bank.
A more subtle, but powerfully re-write of the booking dance, is how they’ve managed to condense the journey from segregated pages into an appealing and almost continuous one page scroll, mimicking the behaviour of an app.
The sum of all these considerations, copy, iconography, and transitions — combines in the perfect cocktail of Content, UX, Design and UI.
Functionality remains at its core — not compromised at the expense of gratuitous animations, but elevated by timely flashes of wit and a distinctive visual personality.
To me, its apparent from the quality of their work this team shares the same lingua franca
(shared common language, or in this case — a strong shared vision)
They wanted to revolutionise the booking process.
From Requirements to Release (and all the beautiful bits in between), they’ve really honed in on some pet peeves of the booking process and put their energy into crafting something rather magical.
“It’s not just design; it’s a collaboration between designers and engineers who get design”
Gene Liebel, founder of Work & Co.
That’s it right there. You see it?
That swig of moonshine that glues all the fuzzy bits together.
Collaboration
Our communication patterns have changed, the way we consume experiences is exponentially getting richer, more complex. Successful experiences like the one above, demands a more involved and multilayered approach.
Content, UX, Design and UI should work to propel each other together towards an intuitive locomotion.
This also means taking an active step in shaping the culture to help shift the ecosystem of products from discrete partitioned acts and fiefdoms, to a culture where ideas are free flowing, and germinate like little seeds between colleagues under one metaphorical roof — taking into account companies like InVision and my own, Farfetch, which spans different timezones and countries.
Take for example some great teams that foster these qualities.
These teams have
- a mutual cause (win world cup, clear names, investigate assignments)
- specialists (from flankers, masters of disguise, to super sleuth skills)
- had some bumps in the road, but know it’s part of the journey (Dan Carter’s groin injury 2011 — true story, court-marshalled, deadly hair humidity)
- an appreciation and trust for each other’s strengths
I don’t believe radical thinking happens in silos. At least not the kind that will have longevity.
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together
— African Proverb
In cultivating a cooperative culture you need people on your side.
A culture where we accept people’s efforts are nuanced and different, but the sum of them come together because their company’s lodestone raises people up, and in turn also raises the quality of their products.
The quality of your product is an unofficial barometer of your company’s culture.
The experience is not just about manufacturing captivating aesthetics, or effortless interactivity and shipping stuff.
It’s the work before any of that.
I don’t believe Work and Co. would have solely used competitive analysis to see whether they need images or not. It’s not about having “whoosh” on the page transitions to be trendy.
The approach will vary, but it’s about getting inside peoples heads — not just our user’s heads, but also our own to deliver something truly outstanding.
To discriminate between trends and understanding the value of observation. It’s about developing a personal code of ethics, and championing nurturing environments. It’s about acknowledging all the hands that have helped write this product. A great product is about a great organisation.
That’s where the Experience starts.
Thanks to Marco Lopes and Tiago Rodrigues for helping cultivate our design culture. Every day is amazing to work with you guys.
