What do you do when you enter a hotel room for the first time? You find the card key slot to switch on the lights, then get inside, place your bag, and do a quick scan of the room to see what’s where. What you don’t do is jump right into the shower or immediately go to bed, right?
Now, let’s say you enter a hotel room that has a Murphy bed neatly concealed between cupboards. Imagine entering a hotel room only to find a big, empty space where a bed ought to be – wouldn’t that be slightly disorienting?
This is precisely what happens when software applications don’t prioritize the objects the users are actually looking for. Defining objects is a crucial step in ensuring that the design aligns with user objectives. It’s what causes confusion and frustration in users. It goes without saying that users come to an app with a fixed objective in mind, therefore, it makes sense to design the product based on fulfilling those objectives.
What is Object-oriented UX?
Object-oriented UX (OOUX) is a method for structuring a space that emphasizes the objects – the things people interact with. It is a design method based on information architecture that is aimed at helping designers organize things in a manner that naturally matches up with the users’ mental models. It prioritizes the objects, and consequently, simplifies an app’s creation and design as well as its experience.
Circling back to the example of when you first enter a hotel room, you get your bearings on the things laid out in front of your eyes, followed by deciding what you want to do with those things.
An object map helps in outlining important entities and their interrelations within a system, facilitating clear communication among design teams and aiding in intuitive user experience design.
OOUX in its most basic form is an ‘objects-first’ approach to designing.
Why consider the OOUX process for the user’s mental model?
Over time, humans have evolved in an environment surrounded by tangible objects (nouns) – mom and dad, food, toys, books, bed, followed by school, desks, playground, friends, and so on. It’s no surprise that humans are naturally adapted to comprehending tangible objects and how they relate to them.
However, things change rapidly when these very humans are placed in a relatively abstract environment, such as a virtual one. Therefore, when a virtual environment is designed in a way that intuitively mimics the user’s real mental model, it ensures a level of comfort.
Child psychology provides great insights into how our basic communication and understanding of any new system is based entirely on the objects within it. A child’s first attempt at understanding the system around them begins with identifying objects such as their caregiver person, bottle, and their crib. There is enough evidence to support how this habit of identifying objects is also how adult humans learn to understand any new system.
User research plays a crucial role in identifying essential objects and actions needed for effective product functionality.
Sophia Prater, Chief Evangelist for OOUX and Certified OOUXer in her article, The Object-oriented User, quoted renowned child psychologist, Jean Piaget, who stated that before children can understand procedures, they must lay some object-oriented groundwork. Jennifer Groh, professor of Neuropsychology at Duke University, postulated in her book Making Space that “nine-tenths of brain power is spent figuring out what and where things are.”
Object-oriented UX design
The bulk of our brain’s processing ability is focused on categorizing details gathered by our senses of sight, touch, and hearing into our perceptual reality. Our brains look out for physical objects, find the ones we like to use, and then try to look for similar objects in any new environment we enter into. We seek continuity and proximity and convert all of that information into objects and build relationships between them.
The UX design process advocates the belief that for any process to be understandable, it has to be built atop an established mental model. For instance, a person looking to play tennis has to first learn to hit the ball using the racquet before learning about the points system. While this is rather obvious, think back to the times when you’ve just opened a new app for the first time and it asked you to sign up before you went any further. What was the immediate feeling you experienced? Taken aback? Discomfort? Mistrust? Turn off? Well, it is natural to feel confused when asked to jump head-first into navigating tasks without having a firm grasp on the objects that underpin those tasks.
Understanding the User’s Mental Model
Understanding the user’s mental model is a cornerstone of object-oriented UX design. A mental model represents how a user perceives and thinks about a system, including the objects, actions, and relationships within it. By aligning the design with the user’s mental model, designers can create a digital environment that feels intuitive and meets user expectations.
In object-oriented UX design, the user’s mental model revolves around objects and their interconnections. Users naturally think in terms of objects—such as people, places, and things—and how these objects interact. By identifying the key objects and their relationships within a system, designers can craft a digital environment that mirrors the user’s thought process, making it easier to navigate and use.
To gain insights into the user’s mental model, designers employ various research methods, including user interviews, surveys, and usability testing. These techniques help uncover the key objects and relationships that users focus on, as well as their goals, behaviors, and pain points. By understanding these elements, designers can ensure that the digital environment is not only functional but also resonates with the user’s mental framework.
How does OOUX work?
OOUX isn’t really new, it has been around since the 1990s when it was known as ‘modular design’. Ever since, it has since evolved, expanded, and been renamed the ORCA process created by Sophia Prater, which maps out the entire OOUX framework.
Note that the OOUX is most useful for complex experiences which have many interrelated instances of things/objects within a digital system. Specifically, data that has:
- structure,
- instances,
- purpose.
For instance, the digital healthcare ecosystem with multiple users (providers, patients, carers, pharmacists, insurance providers) using a multi-layered system to book appointments, create medicine subscriptions, upload and access health reports, manage insurance plans, and more.
The OOUX is built around the ORCA process –
- Objects — the tangible things in a user’s mental model of the system.
- Relationships — how and when objects interconnect and nest.
- Calls-to-Action — the actions a user can take with an Object.
- Attributes — the content/metadata which builds Object instances.
Understanding the concept of ‘nest objects’ facilitates user navigation and comprehension of their connections within a system.
Benefits of Object-Oriented UX Design
Object-oriented UX design offers a multitude of benefits that enhance the overall user experience and streamline the design process:
- Modularity: By promoting a modular approach, object-oriented UX design makes it easier to create, maintain, and scale digital products. Each object can be designed and developed independently, allowing for more efficient updates and iterations.
- Consistency: Object-oriented UX design ensures a consistent and coherent user experience across different touchpoints. By defining and maintaining uniform object structures and interactions, users can navigate the digital environment with ease and confidence.
- Scalability: This design approach allows for agile adaptation to changing user needs and behaviors. As new features or objects are introduced, they can be seamlessly integrated into the existing system without disrupting the overall user experience.
- User-Centered: At its core, object-oriented UX design keeps the user at the forefront. By designing the digital environment around the user’s needs and behaviors, it ensures that the system is intuitive, easy to use, and aligned with the user’s mental model.
By leveraging object-oriented UX design, designers can create digital environments that are not only functional and efficient but also deeply intuitive and user-friendly. This approach aligns with the user’s mental model, making the digital world a more comfortable and engaging place to navigate.
We shall be exploring the OOUX design process in detail in a later blog, but it is important for design practitioners to understand that object-oriented UX can be applied to designing a range of digital experiences. However, its application is more suitable for more complex systems – such as enterprise applications where it’s crucial for objects to be represented consistently across different touchpoints. We will dig deeper into using the OOUX process to enhance usability by aligning with user expectations, reducing accidental complexity due to extraneous design elements, and building and maintaining the product without disturbing its structural integrity.
