Product Usability

Michael Hollauf discusses the SnapchatMicrosoft design continuum and how it has affected the usability of MindMeister

After ten years of running a SaaS company, my co-founder and I decided it was time to do a usability test and see how our customers were actually interacting with our product, MindMeister. What followed forced us to give some consideration to our design philosophy. I think all designers encounter this, consciously or not, at one point or another.

Part of the usability test involved eye tracking software that allowed us to see what parts of the interface people were looking at. Despite all of the innovations on interface design and UX that we’ve seen over the last few years, it quickly became apparent that when people get stuck in software, they invariably look up. As in: they are checking the place where Microsoft Word or Outlook typically have a big multi-tab collection of text elements, icons and random drop-down menus, also known as ‘The Ribbon’.

In terms of design, The Ribbon is a horror, of course, but one thing is clear: Microsoft has conditioned generations of software users to expect tools and interactive elements to be at the top of the interface (not to mention that most millennials know a floppy disk icon means save despite never having seen one).