Overview

These days there is no shortage of complex methods for creating competitive products with solid UI/UX paradigms.

However, I feel like we need to take a good, hard look at UX design on the whole, and find a way to simplify it for the sake of sanity as well as efficacy.

Today, I want to introduce you to a theory that I have developed over several years that has become an essential tool in helping teams figure out exactly how to best serve their users in the B2C marketspace.

UI and UX are both abstractions

Taking this issue from the top, all user interfaces and experiences are abstractions from what users really want: to be done.

Your users all essentially share the same common issue that drives them to use your product or service in the first place:

• They don’t have the time, the money, the energy, or the will to do it themselves.

In and of themselves, both interfaces and experiences are essentially meaningless if they don’t get the user from where they are to where they really want to be.

This of course is in terms of (and I will harp on this until the day that I die):

• Emotional value — how you help them feel
• Utility value — what you help them do
• Convenience value — how easy you make the process for them

The more the user has to interact with your product or service to garner these values, the less they are actually garnering these values directly, and it changes the input to output ratio every single time that your user has to work with your solution.

An I/O ratio of 1 essentially means that for every one input a user is asked to perform, they are receiving a desired output in the form of an outcome.

In many cases, the closer you can get your input to output ratio to a perfect 1, the better.

The Magic Button Theory of UX Design

The magic button theory of ux design can be easily summarized in two fundamental questions:

1. “If users had a magic button that would give them exactly what they wanted, what would they use it for?”
2. “How can we get our experience as close to that as possible?”

What does your user really want, and how can you help them get there as quickly, efficiently, and as effectively as possible?

This idea leads us quickly down a path of simplicity, and allows the user experience/interface design process to be subtractive rather than additive.

• What are you NOT going to make your user do?
• What information can you get away with NOT having?
• How FEW steps can you make your users go through?
• How rewarding can you make the steps they DO have to go through?
• What is your user REALLY wanting and how can you help them get there as directly as possible?

Now there are many ways and forms that your approach can take, and many of those may be exceptionally effective for your use-cases.

A specific caveat

It is worth mentioning that the magic button theory is essentially the inverse of game theory.

Where games are looking to create an optimal challenge for the gamer, the magic button theory (and UX in general) is attempting to create an
optimal solution.

The reason that this is important for you as a UX designer is that you have to be very specific about what, exactly, you are creating for your user and WHY you’re creating it.

An application is not a game, nor visa-versa, and to treat the two as interchangeable would be a gross miscalculation. We must fundamentally understand that:

• Applications focus on jobs-to-be-done, and physical/emotional outcomes-to-be-had
• Games focus on stories-to-be-told, and (specifically) emotional outcomes-to-be-had

You see the difference here?

The greatest distinction here comes from the fact that games almost never have a utility component (what you help your users do) in terms of tangible outcomes.

This distinction is important, and I encourage you to treat each respective venture as such for the sake of your users’ experience and outcomes.

So what does this mean for you?

Essentially, your interfaces and experiences should represent the focus of getting your users to their intended destinations as quickly, efficiently, and effectively as possible.

Flights of fancy and deviations only serve to detract from the outcome(s) that your user is looking to garner, and almost always demand a higher degree of interaction from the user than would otherwise be necessary.

Regardless, and to summarize, the fact remains: give your users a magic button that works, and they will push it every time.