A good user experience all about good … moments.

“What is it we want the user to do in this moment and how does the interface encourage him do it?”

“What is the user’s goal in this moment, and how does the design help her accomplish that goal? Is her goal to get oriented to a new site? Find specific information? Complete a form? Add something to the shipping cart?”

These are not life goals like those that personas are used to capture - but rather interaction goals. And there can be several of them on the same page.

In one moment, the user’s goal can be to figure out the name and purpose of a site after having landed there from a Google search result. The next moment can be about figuring out the controls for a video player to watch a screencast about the application. The next can be for figuring out how to sign up, or to find out about pricing plans, or to contact the company.

Our job is to solve for all of these moments. To design something that supports each of these goals without interfering with any of them. To create a cohesive whole out of the oft-disparate parts.

We’re not designing screens, we’re designing moments.

It doesn’t matter how simple or complex an application is. It only matters what happens in a single given moment. Each one has the potential to increase a user’s confidence or destroy his trust for a product or company, and each one is an important piece of the whole experience.

One of the keys to achieving great design is to look at our work in terms of what has to happen in each one of these moments to make it successful, and then solve for that.