Design for Both Needs and Wants: Applying Anderson’s User Experience Hierarchy of Needs

Anybody can create information. Successful communicators design information. My information design rule for the day? Become an information architect and construct user experiences—every time you put words on a page, screen, or slide.

When we design information—be it in a resume, report, PowerPoint, white paper, sales pitch, text book, social media video campaign, or anything else—we become architects who construct experiences. Our goal should always be to impact people in ways that encourage them to think, act, and respond in ways that we intend and in ways that are good for them.

The success of any communication depends on how people receive it. If it technically meets their needs, that’s good, but filling needs is not all that matters. We also have to give people what they want, even if wants aren’t inherently understood before people access the information.

Consider the “garbage goat” at Riverfront Park in Spokane, Washington. Built in 1976, it may very well be the most popular garbage can in America. A bronzed statue designed to look like a goat, it is built with an internal vacuum that literally sucks up garbage when tossed under its mouth. It’s so fun to play with, the garbage can actually encourages park patrons to seek out garbage and throw it away. Any old garbage can would meet the needs of park patrons. But a garbage goat actually gives them something extra—an experience.

The more we’re able to turn our information into experiences, the more likely we are to take something mundane and forgettable to something meaningful and impactful.

Stephen Anderson, author of Seductive Interaction Design, explained the difference between needs and wants by developing a hierarchy of what makes for the best user experiences. While Anderson talks primarily about interaction design on websites, his principles can be widely applied to any type of information. He suggests that user experiences should be built in this order:

1. Functional. Information needs to be usable, understandable, and accessible. At the most basic level, people need to be able to use and understand it. If not, it fails right away.
2. Reliable. Beyond functional, information and the medium in which it is presented needs to be reliable. If the information is untrustworthy or lacks or credibility—or if the technology on which it is presented (say, on a website) breaks down or is full of broken links, its reliability will kill its functionality.
3. Usable. Usability, in the words of web guru Steve Krug, means to not make people think. In other words, information should be as efficient as possible without creating stumbling blocks along the way. If people can’t find information or they make several errors or misturns, then the information isn’t all that usable.

   **THRESHOLD**Information designs should meet the first three in order to, at the very least, meet users’ needs.

4. Convenient. After crossing the threshold of functionality, reliability, and usability, information should become convenient. In other words, it should be natural to read and follow, it should be simple to navigate, and it should be easy to use.
5. Pleasurable. Information can become enjoyable to access if it is aesthetically pleasing and written with friendly, conversational language, infusing concepts such as humor, fun, and personable.
6. Meaningful. At the highest level of experiential design, information that becomes meaningful directly impacts the emotions and perspectives of your reader-user in new ways. Meaningfulness is subjective and not always easy to capture, but if you can move your audiences in impactful ways by telling stories and capturing cultural, personal, and societal nuances, then you’ve really done something with communicative power.

I adapted Stephen Anderson’s model to create this handy hierarchy of needs model:

So what does this mean for your day-to-day communications? Take the extra effort to design information so that it goes beyond just being functional and usable. Make it pretty. Make it fun. Make it convenient, easy-to-use, and meaningful. Don’t just create functional garbage cans. Design garbage goats.