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The Secret to Achieving Great UX (ft. Michael Bridgeforth, UX Team Manager)
It's such a great feeling when technology just works. We also know the opposite feeling, when a simple task takes hundreds of clicks or an app has a confusing layout. That's user experience. Great UX is something you often don't notice because it simply feels natural. In this episode of Edtech Explored, we sit down with UX Manager Michael Bridgeforth to figure out what happens behind the screens we use every day. We’ll unpack what makes an experience intuitive, why good UX goes far beyond how something looks, and what it takes to design technology around the people actually using it.
Transcript
Erin: The core tenant of UX, or user experience, is deeply understanding the user’s needs. How do people who are creating edtech — designing it, coding it — keep those needs in mind at every step of the process? We’re here to dive into the secrets behind user experience. My name is Erin. I’m here with my co-host, Lauren, and today we’re welcoming Michael Bridgeforth, who manages the UX team at Skyward. Welcome, Michael. Thanks for coming in.
Michael: Thank you.
Lauren: So Michael, I would have to imagine that being in UX, you probably go through daily life with this UX filter. If there’s one thing you could change in daily life that you would improve from a UX perspective, what would that be?
Michael: Well, I recently went to the dentist to, you know, get your daily or annual maintenance of cleaning. And, it’s a tough experience, going to the dentist. The part that irks me the most is when your hygienist wants to have a conversation with you when your mouth is, you know, all open and all these things. But, yeah, I’ve thought about it and I’ve had a couple different dentist experiences, and the one that stands out is the one where you’ve got that massage chair. And you’re sitting there, and you got the massage chair, and you’re looking at ESPN. There’s a lot of different things I think dentist offices can do better, but that one stands out. How can a dentist practice just be more welcoming to where it’s, you know, not so painful to go into the dentist. So that’s one that I always think about. Like this is, why do I hate going to the dentist? So, that’s one experience I would love to see improve.
Lauren: How ‘bout you, Erin? Do you have one?
Erin: I’m thinking about restaurants. I mean, there’s some restaurants. And, usually it’s chains, that you walk in, and you know exactly where you’re gonna go. Somebody’s there to greet you. But then you’ll have restaurants that want to do something different. And, when I walk into them, I don’t know where I’m going. The menu is, maybe the placemat, maybe it’s on my phone, I am not sure. And then, also, you know, hearing “we do things differently here” really kind of sends me into a panic. What do you mean? I know how restaurants work. So when you throw me a curveball, that user experience is different. Now, can I ask you a question to clarify your suggestion for the dentist?
Michael: Sure.
Erin: You’re hoping to have a reclining massage chair with ESPN above the hygienists.
Michael: Yes.
Erin: Awesome. Like why aren’t we implementing this? This is the user’s needs right? We’re keeping those user needs in mind.
Michael: I either dreamt it or experienced it. I don’t remember.
Erin: Well, that would be a really memorable dentist office.
Lauren: Well, hopefully we have some dentists listening to this episode, and they can take that into consideration.
Erin. Yeah, absolutely. So is there anything we can learn about an experience that just feels naturally good versus one that makes us feel super uncomfortable?
Michael: The ones that stick out in real life, and you’ll be able to pinpoint them very clearly. Is whenever your in the real world, and you see a handwritten sign posted on how to use a coffee machine, how to use a certain device, you know that that user experience isn’t intuitive. Because people cannot figure out. So, that's the telltale sign of when user experience needs to be improved. Stuff that just works doesn’t need handwritten signs. That’s the number one thing I think I’ve learned from UX.
Erin: That is fascinating. I also find it fascinating that then the human has to come back and write that handwritten sign. That’s really something that makes me pay attention in this day and age of machine learning and all of that. So, we’ve talked a lot about, in real life, user experience so far. Does user experience change once we put a screen in between it.
Michael: I think it’s gotten a lot better. With the, I guess the touch screens, the tablets, um, when it was strictly mouse and keyboard with the early stages of software design, that was really the barrier. Can I access this software with this mouse, with this keyboard? With the introduction of the touch screens, it’s gotten a lot easier, more intuitive. So I think that’s been the biggest thing. I mean, you see a lot of youth using touch screens. So I think that once that barrier has came down through the use of touch screens, I’ve seen a lot more software become a lot more usable. So, in the land of, you know, people that still need mouses and keyboards, it has improved that experience as well.
Erin: That’s fascinating. Do you think that it’s easier for people to tolerate bad user experiences when it’s not something they're moving their body through, and instead it comes to them through a screen.
Michael: Absolutely not.
Erin: Woah.
Michael: People, yeah. People expect software to just work now. It’s...you see people that will never come back. We can measure that now, when people visit our websites, our applications. We know when people leave and never come back. We can look at those metrics. We can make changes that we lose users, so we look at those metrics, and whenever we have dips, then we have to investigate. What did we do wrong? Did we release a new feature, new update? Why are we losing our users? But a lot of time, users will just tell you. They’ll tell you there’s a lot of channels where people will reach out and say “hey why did you do this?” So, we listen to people. We listen to our users. That’s probably the best way to keep our software running the way we want it to.
Lauren: Yeah, when you mentioned the part about some people, they don’t come back because they had a bad experience. And then I think about the online shopping world of people who do go and frequent places, like Amazon, because they have such a positive user experience, where it is so easy. Like, this week, I had something I wanted to buy, and it’s like one click, add to Thursday’s order. Okay. Done. And then I think of experiences on the flip side, where I remember a few months ago, I had a pair of pants that I wanted to return. And I spent probably ten minutes on this website trying to figure out how to return this pair of pants.
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