Identifying and Conquering User Pain Points in User Experience Design
Empathising with users to address their needs and deliver a product which meets their expectations is at the heart of UX design. Potentially the biggest hazards to the user experience and the focal point of addressing user difficulties are ‘pain points’. For the uninitiated, user pain points are obstacles or stumbling blocks to completing the tasks or solving the problems your product is designed to address.
Identifying and addressing user pain points is an excellent way to begin to see some of the frustrations a user might have when navigating or operating a product or interface — this can be a really great way to inform the design process at any stage. Remember: solving user problems is the most significant objective of UX design.
Generally speaking, there are four categories of pain points: financial, product, process, and support. Each one represents its own kind of challenge, and each requires different approaches to combat.
Financial
Financial pain points are any problems users face which concern money — users want to feel that they are getting their money’s worth, that content is not unduly locked behind money, or that they are reducing their spending by using your product.
If you’re not getting it — a good example of a financial pain point is when a user is deep into an article on a news website, but the article cuts off suddenly partway through, with the site asking for the user to pay a subscription fee to continue reading. This is called a ‘paywall’, and is extremely frustrating for users (as you no doubt know first hand).
Alleviating financial pain points can be challenging, but most solutions revolve around both being completely transparent with what is free or paid content, and offering paid content at a price which is reasonable to users. A good place to start with pricing paid content is to conduct user research to see how users value your product, and how much they would be willing to pay for it in a real-world scenario.
Product
Product pain points are issues with a product or service which consistently inconvenience users. They are unaddressed quality or functionality issues which impact normal operation of a product or service, making it difficult, frustrating, or even impossible to use.
A famous example of a product pain point is Norman Doors. Designers observed that user experience touches everything humans use — including something as mundane as a door. Have you ever tried to pull open a door, only to find it was a push? Maybe it wasn’t even labelled, and it was up to you to struggle to open it to find out how it should be opened? This is a product pain point.
Likely the best solution for product pain points is rigorous in-house and user testing. Having users navigate a product or interface as they would in a real-world setting is a great way to have them bump up against pain points such as these, allowing for them to be eliminated before general release. Even in cases where observation is not possible or not appropriate, interviewing prospective users about their experiences with a prototype or their expectations of an upcoming product could be a good way to identify these issues before they can have a real impact.
Process
Process pain points are those that revolve around navigating between steps of a process, whether it is an issue of physically moving from one part of an interface to another, or just following the steps required to get a task done, like filling out a form or using on-screen controls.
An example of a process pain point is a user being unable to locate a desired item to move it into their cart on an e-commerce website. This means that the user is unable to complete their purchase and would mean a loss of business for the website owner. This could obviously have a severe financial impact on a business if it is a prevalent enough issue.
Most solutions to process pain points revolve around ensuring that users’ expecations on how a product or interface works are met. This can be achieved through a proper application of user-centered design, a design methodology which focusses on users at every stage of the design process. Ensuring that user requirements are properly understood (by, for example, conducting user interviews) is much more likely to result in a product which better reflect user expectation.
Support
Support pain points revolve around users feeling an inadequate level of support when using a product. Users navigating a product will inevitably have questions or customer service requirements, and not being able to find answers to their questions or a level of informational support can be a major source of frustration.
An example of this kind of pain point is when a user is navigating a website or web service, runs into trouble, and is unable to locate a customer service contact point. The user might have an issue which is impacting their ability to go through with a transaction, which would not only be deeply frustrating for the user, but also if unresolved may lead to a loss of revenue for the website owner.
There is a lot of best practice surrounding eliminating support pain points. You may notice, for example, that even very simple websites will usually have an FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page, which aims to answer any common questions users have, and therefore reduce pressure on customer service personnel. Another strategy is to ensure that there is easily accessible customer service contact available at most one click away from every page of a website or interface — this elimiates ambiguity regarding accessing essential customer service.
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