This presentation, posted to slideshare was prepared by Giles Colborne of cxpartners. Colborne’s approach to UX is to create experiences that are both useful and delightful.

If you’re somewhat unfamiliar with how user experience design differs from design at large, these slides are a great primer.

The big idea is this: By identifying anxiety points and fixing them, we can delight people.

What are anxiety points? They’re make-or-break moments that introduce uncertainty. Anxiety make us unsure of ourselves, upsetting internal balance. We won’t feel well again until that balance is restored.

Colborne cites an example which I’ve also experienced: You’re listening to a song or podcast on your iPod and the cord pops out. Oh no! You really wanted to hear that part, and you’re worried that it’s going to be a major hassle to get back to it. After plugging the cable back in, you discover that the iPod had detected the missing headphones and paused itself. You didn’t miss a thing. You’re delighted that someone at Apple took the time to think about that situation and correct for it.

Anxiety also stirs up long-term memory in a way that standard experience does not. The human brain recognizes threatening moments and saves the outcome (it’s how we learn). If that memory is happy, then you’ve associated something positive with your product that will be remembered for a long time.

Think about your anxiety points

If you own a business, run a website, sell products, or offer services, start thinking about where your anxiety points might be.

Start by observing. Figure out how people actually use your product or service. Then draw some reasonable conclusions about where the anxiety points lie. Order-rank them if you can.

Then act

Colborne suggests that you pick one problem to fix right away, and fix it completely.

That’s the right approach. Don’t try to do everything at once.

Measure it

You might think that there’s no easy way short of quantitative usability testing to determine success. Colborne recommends that you pay attention to electronic word of mouth (net promoter score, online chatter) and conduct surveys.