Elliot Ulm: DESIGNTHINKING (Copyright © Elliot Ulm, 2021)

Over the years, while building out teams and developing standards that help my designers collaborate with folks from several different backgrounds, it became clear that one very important factor was always up for debate: what “good design” actually was for our organization. To better do this, we de develope a simple framework that could serve as a common language between non-designer and designer to help answer that inevitable question of “What kind of feedback are you looking for?” I wanted to share a framework that I adapted from others called CARMEL.

What does it stand for?

Originally CARMEL guidelines were loosely inspired by Nielsen’s usability heuristics, but incorporate knowledge and standards that have emerged since Nielsen’s principles were published over 20 years ago, including best practices for accessibility.

In their simplest terms CARMEL stands for: Consistency, Accessibility, Recovery, Memory, Efficiency and Language.

Consistency

Follow common design conventions, interaction patterns, and style guides. We should not invent a new pattern or concept at the sake of a user’s intuition or understanding. If big changes happen, we should make sure to that we use them consistently throughout our experience.

As with other things in life (think the acceptable number of rat droppings allowed in a Snickers bar)there is a level of acceptable deviation from the expected and many times that deviation will result in new variation and redefinition of what is deemed “consistent”.

When things don’t feel or work the same it creates doubt, hesitancy and can feel phishy. We want to avoid that uncanny valley of feeling like something is just not right because it's the too similar to something but exactly.

Accessibility

Accessibility can include content and experiences possible to be consumed and experienced by important subsets of users. Unfortunately, these are affordances that many times are not considered when making design decisions.

Good accessibility includes everything from choosing color combinations with the appropriate amount of contrast to designing interaction patterns that are screen reader friendly to ensure that we have provided easy access to information for those that are differently-abled. Designers, among others have an important responsibility to identify these opportunities and solve for these needs, even if they are just an edge case.

Design and implementation play a huge role in accessibility. Sites can be assessed for accessibility using a number of methods. I like IBM’s “Equal Access Accessibility Checker”.

It considering practices like using Alt text on elements, how CSS around focus states is written, script parsing, etc.

It’s not just a nice-to-have it’s very much a legal issue, especially in California, Florida and New York.

For example in 2019 The Supreme Court denied a petition from pizza giant Domino’s to hear whether its website is required to be accessible to the disabled, leaving in place a lower court decision against the company. The case was originally brought by a blind man who sued the pizza chain after he was unable to order food on Domino’s website and mobile app despite using screen-reading software.

Recovery

Recovery is something that many of us wouldn’t necessarily associate with Design. In short, this is designed for error prevention and recovery. We all hate to see potential policyholders getting caught up during the process of enrollment and not having a clear path forward. A good recovery-minded design can give us a path forward when we don’t have obvious answers.

This can be simply a well-laid-out screen design or very intentional logic flows that account for even the worst-case of scenarios.

Memory

Considering the limits of the human mind is super important in product design. Asking too much of our users or making too large of assumptions of their background or overall context can be the final nail in the coffin (no pun intended) for many a would-be high-intent buyer.

A good example of this is Miller’s Law. In it Psychologist George A. Miller establishes the theory that we have the limit on the number of things that a person can hold in their working memory is Seven(plus or minus two) and do something with it before we reach our “channel capacity”.

What this means is that its best or organize content into groups of about 5-9 rather than chunks. Assuming that users have past insurance experience or know what they want to buy or even what life insurance is a risky proposition. To quote Don Normman in his book The Design of Everyday Things:

“Make things visible: bridge gulfs between Execution and Evaluation.”

Efficiency

Maximize task efficiency and information findability is something that we can all agree is important. The reduction of “Bad” friction - friction that creates frustration or reason to leave is something that all “good” product design should strive for. This is good old “how few clicks can I do this in?”

Good friction can come in real handy, its an invaluable tool in the product designer’s tool belt and do many good things like install trust, educate and communicate. Examples of this are persistent chat/CX call opportunities during an on-boarding experience, “help me answer this” workflows and confirmation screens.

Speedrun of User Inyerface https://userinyerface.com/game.html

Language

Good design tailors terminology to the user’s expertise and reading level. Words are a big part of a user experience, for better or worse. Bad or confusing use of language can make it impossible for some people to feel like they are comfortable moving forward, good use of language can give users that warm and fuzzy feeling that we all want and make it easier to be willing to “pull the trigger” on that big purchase or 20-year commitment.

A good rule of thumb that we try to stick to when coming up with copy for things like helper text and other information is to write at a 5th-grade reading level to ensure maximum accessibility for most readers and avoid or possibly over-explain any jargon.

CARMEL UX