Heatmaps are a common tool used by UX researchers to reveal user trends, but heatmaps aren’t limited to the digital world. In fact, you can see user trends in the real world everywhere you look. This association from the physical world to digital might help to better mentally connect and therefore reveal more insightful extrapolations from your user research data.

Button Fail

One of the earliest exercises in UX at Full Sail University is to design an elevator panel for a skyscraper. There are many considerations to make and several common pitfalls that reveal usability design patterns to students. In a video about usability (see below) the presenter showed an example of a design failure that revealed user intention. The ground floor button placard was being pressed when people assumed it was the button and not just the label. The number of times the placard had been pressed accidentally was so great that the label had completely rubbed off. Just like a digital heatmap, we can see how users WANT the object to behave.

Desire Paths

This button example got me to thinking about the similarity it has to desire paths, which are unintended erosion pathways that form in the ground because they are so frequently travelled by human foot-fall. The path usually represents the shortest or most easily navigated route between an origin and destination. Essentially it’s pedestrians voting with their feet, the way they would want the path to be if they could choose.