User Pathways

Lately, I've been plagued by calls soliciting donations from my undergraduate college - though in truth, I suppose it's more accurate to say that I've been constantly plagued by them, it seems to be more frequent and annoying of late. I suppose the administration are looking for a productive use of the staff's spare time in the summer, and the fact that I've donated in the past has only encouraged them to pursue me more aggressively. But I digress, even before I've begun ...

What comes to mind every time I see the school on my caller ID, is something I observed at the university when I was a student there: while the classrooms were in disrepair and the library's collection was pathetically inadequate even to undergraduate studies, the maintenance crews were laying brick pathways everywhere the students had trampled a trail on the lawns. This annoyed me to no end, and still does, but it does call to mind a metaphor for user experience.

In many public places, the rule is "keep off the grass." There are signs posted, and fences and obstacles erected to discourage people from walking on the lawns and wearing bare patches in the grass. The choice made by my alma mater was significantly different: to let the students walk where they will, following the most convenient and direct route by their own choosing - and then by observing the wear patterns in the grass, to determine where pathways should be built.

That seems like a lazy approach, but it also seems quite brilliant: accepting that people will choose for themselves the best course of action to accomplish their goals, then providing the tools they need to accomplish them, is likely more effective and provides for a more pleasant user experience than attempting to herd them onto a pathway that is inconvenient, for the same of preserving a sense of order that has nothing to do with the needs of the people who use it.

The application of the principle to user experience design should be obvious, though it's likely that the nature of technology is less of an open field through which users can find their own path and more in the nature of a labyrinth in which users are forced to choose from a few defined methods of navigation, hemmed in by barriers to choosing their own path.

So it's likely not possible to observe the paths users take through a pre-defined process to find where they are making their own way, because the barriers prevent it. Though I do wonder if some useful information can be gleaned by examining where users attempt to step off the path - to click a link that takes them outside the conversion "funnel" and, rather than attempting to herd them back onto the desired path, to consider ways in which such "missteps" might be suggesting an alternate course, and consider ways to build a path that will get them to their destination.

In the end, it's just a meditation - some paltry fruit borne of one of life's little annoyances - but I definitely think it's something that bears consideration - and, if nothing else, is a handy metaphor I can refer to when I find myself stuck in a conversation with one of those small-minded types who insists that there's only one path the user ought to take and that the focus of the designer is to keep them out of the weeds, and off of the grass.