Beyond Usable and Useful

There’s a new report out by leading research firm Forrester on how usability alone is not enough. My company, Messagefirst, was one of the firms included in the research for this report. Here’s the excerpt from the report Desirable Online Experiences: Taking Websites Beyond Usable and Useful:

Consumers are spending more and more time online, seeking out experiences that are relevant, engaging, and personal. However, many Web sites make users struggle to complete simple goals, have little to no emotional punch, and fail to embrace the diversity of consumers’ wants and needs. To make matters worse, today’s Web organizations must often backburner projects that would improve their sites’ desirability factor in order to fix more pressing problems. As a result, the topic of desirability largely remains a mystery in the user experience community. We’ve explored three tactics for creating desirable online experiences: 1) providing engaging content and functionality, 2) focusing on aesthetics, and 3) incorporating elements of game design.