How poor UI/UX can be a Traumatizing Experience for Businesses and Users

Poor UI/UX issues are common issues that probably have affected many people while accessing apps for shopping or banking. This is the reason why many of us have been jumping from one website/app to another. There may not be big usability issues, but even small things add up to make bigger problems. What is annoying, is that it’s constantly encountering the same things that never seems to get fixed.
Users can get irritated, anxious, and sometimes furious with a bad user experience, and they tend to remember the poor user experience for a longer period of time. Imagine the last time you had to wait too long for your dinner to be delivered because your order was misplaced and you never felt like ordering food from the same restaurant?
User experience matters and matters enough to move you from one service provider to another.

Poor UI/UX costs $500 million to Citibank

Citibank, which was acting as Revlon’s loan agent, was supposed to send about $8 million as an interest payment to the Revlon’s lenders. Instead, Citibank accidentally transferred almost 90 times that amount, including $175 million to a hedge fund. In total, Citibank accidentally sent $900 million to Revlon’s lenders. Some lenders did return the money, but others did not. The US banking giant had to file a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York, seeking the return of funds that it said were transferred in an operational mistake due to confusing UI of the software and a poorly designed user interface contributed to the massive screw up. As per NDTV Profit report:

“After Revlon repurchased part of the debt, a Citigroup employee was supposed to manually adjust the share of the loan the remaining lenders still owned ahead of interest payments scheduled to be sent out this month. But the employee didn’t select the correct system options — instead allowing the loan to be repaid in full with interest. Colleagues who are supposed to catch such errors didn’t. Unfortunately, the manual checks of that selection also failed to detect the mistake, Citigroup wrote in its court filing.”

The first thing that differentiates a good web/app product from a bad one is it’s user interface and user experience that it provides to its users.

What constitutes a great User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX)?

User Interface in a simple word, is how a website/app/product interacts with its users, including the interaction between a human and a computer, interface logic as well as appearance.

User Experience is a meaningful and relevant experience that a user interface of a web/app design provides to its users. Basically, creating product flow with a high level of usability. The usefulness of delivering the ideas and product to the user will be more important than how beautiful a Website/App is.

A good UI is when a User is satisfied by achieving the desired goals:

User: For whom the end product or service is designed by keeping in mind his needs.

Satisfaction: It is the feeling that the user gets when the product/service is at par or beyond his expectation. Although functionality and ease of use are the key components, the product should also be pleasing to the eye, delivering an enjoyable experience.

Goals: Any product/service is designed keeping in mind a purpose. When the design does complete justice in achieving the purpose, it automatically becomes popular amongst it’s users.

A good UI is measured on the following parameters:

• Error-free
• Easy to use
• Eye pleasing
• Easy to understand
• Effective for the end goal

A good UX should stand strong on the following parameters:

• Useful
• Desirable
• Findable
• Accessible
• Credible
• Longer Retention Rate
• Better Conversion Rate
• Lesser Error Rate
• Improved Task Completion Time
• Higher Task Success Rate
• Higher Usability
• Ergonomic Design
• Rich Functionality
• Effective Content Strategy

This is where an expert designing company comes into picture, because they know the importance of user experience and how to make sure the user is happy and convinced. After all, the happier the users are, the more successful the businesses will become, be it a Website, App or a Software product.

We at Nickelfox take UI and UX design very seriously. Being one of the most trusted partners for clients, we always make sure that every aspect of design stems from delightful user experience. Our designs cover all of the above mentioned good practices and much more:

• Responsive Designs: Responsive designs help in offering greater user experience. What looks good on a website might not look good or fit well on a mobile or tab device. Therefore, we design keeping in mind the usability criteria.
• Light on Page: Run time or speed of an app/web is the key component of any UX friendly design. Slow speed of the web/app can easily motivate users to switch to different web/app.
• Apt Call to Action(CTA): Along with a great content and look and feel of a design, it is very necessary to have a call to action button at the right places for better user experience and quick purchases for which a user has come on your site/app. Clear and simple CTAs are essential in avoiding human error as in the Citibank case.
• Error Free: Error free web/app design leaves a good impression on the user and keeps web/app away from unnecessary issues that can ruin the hard work of the user. Our designs and codes are clean and bugs free. And even in an event of error or breakdown, the Error handling mechanism is the most crucial part of the UX strategy, in ensuring the resolution for the User.
• Secured: At the design stage we make sure that our end product is secured. Our secured apps not only save users sensitive data in the present but can also act smarter and foresee future threats coming from attackers and safeguard intellectual property.

The most important thing in our way of working at Nickelfox, is to understand the complete requirement of the client and create the best user experience. Our dedicated team utilizes the latest technologies and provides complete services for delivering customer-centric experiences.