Analytic Design Group

Colour is the worst reason to buy a bike says my local bike seller (we’re talking bicycles here, not motorcycles). I can’t really disagree, it’s true, there are so many other things to consider like fit, comfort, components, style of bike that really colour shouldn’t even appear on the list of requirements. And yet, I heard several people commenting that they liked one colour or another, I know at least one sale didn’t happen because the colour was wrong for that rider, and heard that sermon preached several times in during the course of my very long visit to the bike shop.

If it’s the worst reason to buy a bike, why does it play such an important role for so many people?

My bike seller, who given the neighbourhood, is expected to be quite pedantic, goes on at length about the art and science of bikes and bike buying, ecological geography, the challenges facing the industry, believes only in the pure fit of the bike. In other words, if the bike fits wear it, regardless of colour.

It was my strong impression in observing the people he was selling bikes to, that while all were happy to receive his wisdom on all things bike related, really liked the black one, or really wanted to try the red one. Some people I also observed did not want to look at bikes that were not the right colour.

So, what’s going on here? Why would a bike that is in every other way ’perfect’ for the rider be rejected on the basis of colour and why would another rider choose an imperfect bike based on colour. I also observed this same behaviour based on bike style.This isn’t true of all bike shoppers, of course, but I did observe this strong preference for style over substance in several customers.

While my bike seller finds this behaviour somewhat frustrating, really they should choose based on logic, I found it perfectly natural. A bike is about a feeling. And while fit and comfort will definitely support a good feeling, what people identify with first is what they see: colour and style.

What has this got to do with user experience and websites and applications? Everything. It is a parable for how we need think about issues like usability and user experience.

The issue comes up for people in roles like mine where you design an interaction or the visual layer and someone comes along and says to you you can’t do something because it’s not usable. Sometimes they’ll even cite W3C standards when they do that. While, with literally hundreds of usability tests under my belt, I’ve never known usability to be a black and white issue, lots of people like to get into quoting standards and Jacob Neilsen, and like my bike seller, ignore the fact that the interactive and visual layers, the user’s response to the feeling he gets from the site, its connection to the brand promise, its style and colour, is just as important as the code that lies beneath it. That’s not to say we need to disregard usability and W3C standards, it just means that I think we have to give equal weight to considering the interactive and the visual experience.

The perfect bike is the one that makes you feel the best, probably like you did when you were 12 and found that pure sense of joy you got from riding fast and smooth, out there on your own, mom, dad and all that entailed somewhere else. That bike probably has a colour and a style in your mind and when you see it, you know it.

The same is true for the user experience on web site. One look, likely less than 10 seconds long and your user has made a decision about you and your site. They may, like the folks in the bike store, put up with the lecturing (substitute pedantic design) or the poor style and colour, but when they find it, they know it. Don’t you want your website to be the it that they find?