I’ve been using the chart above to explain DesignAxiom’s role in the interactive world.

The chart is pure opinion and it’s meant to be slightly provocative and funny. It’s a gut-feel comparison of various technologies and how they stack up against each other. And how that’s changed over time.

You can see where we think DesignAxiom fits: developing web and interactive applications, primarily on the Flash platform, that have a high quality of user experience–a quality of user experience that approaches desktop applications. That’s an oversimplified description of what we do, but close enough.

Of course the main reason that our particular services are relevant is that most new interactive software isn’t targeted at the desktop, it’s targeted at the web. And many web applications are severely compromised by the browser.

For some applications that matters. But for others it doesn’t. Economics and audience expectations play a role in determining which kinds of applications are best suited for the kind of interactive development that we do.

Utility vs Quality of User Experience

One way to understand that is to look at Utility vs Quality of User Experience.

If an application has very high utility, which is to say, I can’t live without it or it would be a significant inconvenience if it didn’t exist, then the quality of user experience doesn’t matter so much.

I mapped out some common applications that we use during the day around here, based on rankings from our staff. The results are not intuitive for me, but the chart gives you some insight into opportunities for improvements in user experience.

 

For instance, Expedia (lower right quadrant) has, for me, high utility. It would fundamentally affect how I travel, and the options I have for travel if it didn’t exist. But I don’t find Expedia to be very pleasant to use (and I think it’s the best of the travel websites).

Developing something like Expedia is enormously complex and expensive. Integrating with the various travel suppliers and their systems, the archaic airline industry backends and data formats, some of which that have their roots in the 1960s maybe even 1950s: that’s really hard.

Real competitors are not going to spring up overnight. So if the quality of user experience is poor, too bad for the users. It’s just too useful not to use.

Somebody has added “vim” (the vi editor) to the list. Isn’t that cute? We have real developers here. It ranks very high on utility. But very very low on quality of user experience (bottom right of the chart). By the way, that can be argued. For an experienced user, vim may have a very high quality of user experience.

Our goal is to develop applications and sites that sit in that upper right-hand quadrant. Applications that people find useful and that have a high quality of user experience.

You can use this chart to see if your competitor has an application that you would place in the upper right-hand quadrant. If they do, it’s going to be an uphill battle for you to create something competitive. Or maybe you have no choice but to try and meet them there to avoid having your product ignored in the market.

Say vim was your product, you could look up at the top right of this chart and there you see TextMate. That’s bad news for you. Another text editor with very high utility but also, with a very high quality of user experience. All things being equal (and of course they never are, but) a user on the market for a text editor is going to pick TextMate over vim. You’ll need to do something for your product.

In fact, we have a number of customers who come to us for that very reason. Competitive pressure for better user experience. Unless you have a unique value proposition like Expedia, that pressure is going to increase as newer technologies like the iPad set even higher expectations for the quality of user experience.

Given that we see platforms like the iPad surpassing not only Flash in terms of Quality of User Experience, you can correctly infer from these two charts that we see the future of our business being tied to platforms like iPad, and less and less, Flash and the browser.

On a side note, this chart is based on rankings that our team put together. Frankly I’m surprised that something like Facebook ended up in the lower left quadrant (low utility and poor quality of user experience). Same with iTunes. But, it goes to show, you never can tell. It’s all in the eye of the beholder.

Interaction vs Attraction

One thing you should note, I use the expression “quality of user experience” and not usability. “Usability” is a loaded word. It has both academic and street meanings and they’re not the same thing.

Usability for people with an academic leaning tends to be closely related to the field of human computer interaction (HCI) which, by and large, ignores “look and feel” issues over the more empirical and technical aspects of how an interface is perceived and negotiated by a human.

The definition of usability in that context can produce usable websites, such as Jakob Neilsen’s site or say or the Government of Canada website which, while conforming to accepted technical standards of usability tend to look, as we say in the industry, like crap.

That brings us to the street definition of usability. When people say that an application or device is “usable” they’re really evaluating the user experience on a number of different criteria.

Some of those criteria are completely intangible and would be more familiar to advertisers: how people feel about the application they’re using. The way it enhances their self image, or meets a need that they weren’t even aware they had.

The other criteria are tangible: Can users can do what they want to do, with ease, speed, and without frustration. Does the application anticipate their needs? Does it forgive their mistakes?

We call this attraction vs. interaction. If I take some well known apps and sites and map attraction vs. interaction, from my own point of view, I get this chart:

 

Look at Garage Band which I would hold out as an application that has both superb interactivity (relatively complex tasks that can be discovered and accomplished with ease and pleasure) and which is highly appealing: graphically rich and polished, with animations and effects that act to reinforce the metaphor of what the user is doing, but also to reinforce the sense of quality of the product itself.

Contrast that with the Red Bull Copilot site or any of the other promotional Flash-heavy sites which are very engaging and attractive, but which are not particularly easy to use.

For the Red Bull site, that’s not a problem. Like many promotional micro-sites, attraction is the point. Anything that would compromise the wow factor or media experience or the message would actually compromise what the brand is attempting to accomplish.

Now compare that with Craigslist. Craigslist has, actually, good interaction. But it’s conspicuously ugly. Arguably, that lack of visual appeal is not just an artifact of Craigslist’s early origins on the web, it is now part of it’s appeal.

Craigslist has market share that presents a large barrier to competition, but I think that in the long term it’s lack of attraction is a liability. A competitor with the right business plan has an opportunity to create a competitive application that users will prefer to choose, if they are not already invested in Craigslist.

The thing is that no matter what you’re building and who you’re building for, you want to maximize both the interaction and attraction of your application.

Why does it matter? For the same reason that we want to maximize both Utility and quality of user experience. If you don’t, in the absence of other barriers, there is an opportunity for your competitor to overtake you.

Conversely, it may provide an opportunity for you to overtake your competitors.