Hello All,
Penned by an American writer, the phrase “if life gives you lemons, make lemonade” is just the kind of optimism that grates with every fiber of my British upbringing.
Annoyingly, however, it also happens to be excellent advice, especially when working in the world of user experience design.
The Lemons of Constraints
We work in a field often hampered by constraints such as budget, time, technology, and more. We find ourselves handed the preverbal lemon and are expected to do something with it. In more British parlance, we are asked to “polish a turd.”
Yet, if we adopt the “making lemonade” mindset, it is often surprising what can be achieved.
Make Lemonade
Take, for example, Apple’s latest iPhone and the new “feature” creatively titled the “dynamic island.” Setting aside the rather fanciful naming, one has to ask if this is actually a feature at all or instead, in fact, a creative solution to deal with a technical constraint.
I am sure they would prefer to remove the notch entirely, but when faced with the lemon of technical limitations, they chose to make lemonade. They turned a weakness into a feature that delights users.
Let me give you an example even more relevant to those of us working on the web.
My Experience of Making Lemonade
I once worked on an ecommerce site whose business was built on a franchise model. As part of this arrangement, each franchise region could set its own prices, making it impossible to show prices on the website until we had the user’s postcode.
As you can imagine, from both a conversion optimization and user perspective, this was a disaster. It was an enormous lemon.
However, after some consideration, we managed to turn this weakness into an opportunity.
First, we established what the highest price being charged was and displayed this by default. This set people’s expectations.
Then we encouraged people to provide their postcode to receive local service. We made a selling point of this by providing a local phone number and contact person (including their photo). This gave the service a more friendly and personal feel.
In fact, turned out to hugely popular with the older demographic we were targeting. For example, they loved being able to see a photo of the person who would deliver their product and being able to contact that person directly.
Finally, once they had provided their postcode, we could then show them their “discounted” price, which obviously came as a pleasant surprise because, in most cases, it was less than they had previously seen.
Make the Most of a Bad Situation
Was this a perfect solution? Absolutely not. It meant the prices looked higher initially than they probably were. However, it did make the most of a bad situation.
It is easy to get frustrated when faced with these kinds of challenges. However, often with a bit of thought, it is possible to come up with a creative workaround that is preferable to simply giving up and settling.
