A beautifully designed, zen-like office space, with plenty of plants and daylight. What good does it do, if your screen is a blinking inferno of notifications, cumbersome systems and complicated login processes?
Our work environment affects us. It has a profound impact on everything from our mood and general well-being to our productivity and even our health. Most companies are aware of this and spend significant resources on designing great office spaces. Which is great!
However, nowadays, most of us tend to spend most of our time in front of our screens. And what meets us there? A sense of calm, focus and energy? Or, is our digital environment a mess of flashing notifications, exploding inboxes and lost passwords?
According to Swedish occupational health care provider Previa, surveys show that employees spend an average of 30 minutes per day on dealing with tech-related problems, that quickly raise the level of stress hormones released in our blood. Previa, therefore, lists an increased focus on UX and user-friendly software, as one of the ways we can decrease stress at work.
Good UX is like a banana
The more time we spend in front of our screens, the more we’re affected by our digital work environment. Good UX is the digital equivalent of a clean, functional and uncluttered office. It helps us stay focused, calm and productive.
But, what exactly is UX? UX is short for User Experience. UX-designers often like to fruit as an analogy, to explain what UX is.
The banana, for example, is an example of great UX. Mother Nature really hit the UX jackpot when she designed that one. The banana is conveniently wrapped in protective packaging. It comes in single-size portions. It’s easy to tell when it’s ripe, it’s easy to unwrap, and it’s easy to eat. The whole fruit just makes sense.
Compare that to, let’s say, a mango. In terms of UX, the mango is a bit of a failure. Yes, it’s super tasty. If it’s ripe, that is. And it’s hard to tell if it is! It’s also a little bit too big for one person, but too small to share. It doesn’t fit in your pocket, and you’ll need a tool to peel it. Once peeled, it’s slippery, messy and you always end up leaving half of it attached to the ridiculously large pit in the middle.
And just like there are plenty of tasty but messy fruits, there's a wide array of software on the market that can do great things. But that unfortunately, like the mango, leave their users frustrated, stressed out and sticky (ok, maybe not sticky) after every interaction.
We’re our own super users
At Telavox, we use Telavox for all our internal and external communication.
That means our team of developers, are also daily users of the very software they’re developing. Which, in turn, means that they’re immediately aware of any UX issues, and are continuously making improvements.
We try to keep the UX in Telavox at a consistent banana-level. And if something doesn’t live up to banana standard, we fix it right away.
Why don’t you give it a try, and see what you think?
We’ve written more about UX and the importance of a great user experience in the workplace here.
