How to use fundamental human needs to create a better design?
Fulfilling each step of the hierarchy of needs requires applying logic to create a product that meets the functional priorities of its purpose. Aside from that, it's also about investigating how a product may work for a user outside of its core purpose.
You're probably familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Today we will uncover it can be used to improve product design. This model has helped me create digital products quickly.
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is a motivational theory in psychology created by U.S. psychologist Abraham Maslow.
This theory was published in the academic journal Psychological Review in 1943 and is usually depicted using a five-tier model showing human needs in a pyramid diagram.
The most fundamental demands are those at the base of the pyramid. You must complete the current level to move on to the next one. From bottom to top, the demands are physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.
According to the theory, people are driven to take care of their basic requirements before moving on to more complex ones.
For instance, a person who is starving will not prioritize finding a love relationship (belonging). Instead, they are forced through evolution to put their needs for survival first (physiological).
Product design and Maslow's theory
Maslow's theory has been modified and used in numerous domains over time. These include business, marketing, and design.
The "Design Hierarchy of Needs" was a translation of Maslow's theory by Steven Bradley in 2010. Similar to the original idea, the fundamental design requirements must be satisfied before moving on to the next stage.
The five tiers of Bradley's theory are:
Functionality
Reliability
Usability
Proficiency
Creativity
Product design hierarchy of needs
Steven Bradley's Design Hierarchy of Needs offers a helpful and applicable set of guidelines for developing new products and assessing the design of already existing ones.
As you design a new product, whether it be software or a tool for the financial sector, moving through the process is as simple as asking the questions that each level implies.
Functionality: Does it work?
Reliability: Does it work when I need it to?
Usability: Can I figure out how to make it work?
Proficiency: Can it show me how to make it work better?
Creativity: How else can this work for me?
Here, it's essential to address these questions to clients and pay close attention to their responses.
Let's break down each level and explore each in detail.
Five levels in product design's hierarchy of needs
Fulfilling each step of the hierarchy of needs requires applying logic to create a product that meets the functional priorities of its purpose. Aside from that, it's also about investigating how a product may work for a user outside of its core purpose.
Functionality
The most basic yet critical part of a product's design is its functionality. Does this mobile or web app fulfill its primary objective? If it doesn't, then there's little point in advancing to the other stages of building the product.
For example, let's take a password manager. If the product doesn't allow the user to save/reveal passwords and it's not secure – there's no point in adding features such as storing important documents or working on small interactions.
The bar to enter the market now is very high. If your product is beautifully designed but doesn't provide the promised functionality — it will not go far.
Functionality is correctly illustrated as the most significant part of the pyramid and serves as its foundation. When you're starting to design and build your product — your primary focus should be fulfilling this part of the process.
Keeping your customers or users in mind while answering the fundamental question of whether or not the product serves its primary function is critical.
Always undertake extensive research on what your customers expect from your offering. Consumer research is an excellent technique to learn the fundamental functions of your product.
Asking what the minimum expectations of your product are should help you complete this foundational step.
Reliability
Can the user trust that the product will always work? Reliability is almost as important as functionality in design. If the product works each time users require it, they will likely invest their time/money in it.
When designing a reliable product, the key here is thorough testing. Of course, testing should be continued even after the product reaches the top of the pyramid of needs. But at this stage, as varies as possible, testing is crucial to design a product that users can rely on.
Besides the product's core, it's also good to have support systems in place to help you improve performance and reliability. These systems should be integrated into the product and allow you to monitor customer demand and tell your teams if they meet customers' needs.
As mentioned, testing is your best friend at this stage. Here are a few types of reliability tests you can use:
Discovery testing: This testing is focused on determining the limits of given inputs.
Life testing: This type of testing examines how a product will operate over its lifetime and under regular use.
Environmental testing: This form of testing examines the pressures and situations under which your product will be expected to work by the consumer.
Regulatory testing: Although not commonly connected with the initial tests, this is an essential collection of tests that examine the product's core functions for compliance and safety. Failure to pass regulatory testing usually indicates that a product must be withdrawn from the market.
Usability
This need stresses the ability of people to use your product with ease.
The key question to ask here is this:
Can the user figure out how to use your product and its functionalities with minimal guidance?
A real-life example was when I was using my iPhone and MacBook in a new place.
I have connected to WiFi with my iPhone and checked my email. I had to do something on my laptop to answer an email, so I picked up my computer and opened it. I found what I was looking for and sent it via email to the client. Then I realized I never manually connected my MacBook to the same WiFi.
The connection settings synced across my devices and allowed me to focus on my primary task without distracting me from entering the WiFi password again.
But even when you think you have made your product usable for your customers, remember to create high-quality instructions to accompany your product. It's a vital part of the product because it can help explain how to use your product when users are stuck.
Proficiency
We can only start discovering what makes a good design at this stage. To satisfy the users on this level, designers need to ask themselves if a product's design helps users become better at using the product.
Examples include to-do apps that teach GTD. Writing apps that train your focus. My favorite ones are Things 3 and iA Writer.
Always be thinking, what else could this product do? Consider whether anything enables the user to perform more than the product's core function when considering design proficiency.
Does it help the user discover new and better ways of doing their work?
With each interaction with the product, does the user discover more about its capabilities?
Keeping the idea of growth in mind can provide designers with an excellent visual representation of design proficiency.
Creativity
After proving that the product can perform its core functions, the next step is to fulfill other needs. You can do it with an injection of innovation.
Take your favorite to-do app, for example. Its primary function is to help you capture things you need to get done and track your progress by checking them off. You should also be able to group multiple to-dos in projects.
However, genuinely appealing to-do apps can fulfill less tangible needs. It should be aesthetically pleasing, customizable, extendable, and flexible enough to suit your needs. This has its own parallel to Maslow's Hierarchy of needs: once you have the basics covered — you can look into more complex needs.
Creativity is all about going beyond the fundamental necessity of a product and looking for innovative ways to meet the customer's wants.
Conclusion
The hierarchy of design needs is far from flawless and cannot be depended on for every area of product design.
Finally, we design things to meet human wants. As a result, Maslow's Hierarchy of needs and any other psychological work that looks at basic and complicated human needs offer a lot of knowledge that can be applied to product design.