Usability, UI and UX: the 3 key principles of a user-friendly app, even in Pharma

The Digital Revolution in which we have been involved in the last 10 years – primarily with the advent of smartphones and social networks – has changed and continues to change the way we act in the world. In particular, the digitization of the human experience has made fundamental the concepts of Usability, UI (user interface) and UX (user experience). 

In a competitive and ever-growing technological environment, where the average user has at least 80 applications installed on his phone, you must strongly consider the need to carefully design your digital products if you want to succeed. 

Usability. Create an app that anyone can use! 

Why is Usability at the heart of everything? More than 204 billion apps were downloaded in 2019, yet 62% of them are not used monthly and 25% are used only once after being installed. 

The reasons for this trend are many and varied. In a heterogeneous digital environment full of stimuli, the simplicity of use and therefore the speed with which we can understand a product, becomes the key to creating an immediate engagement with users. The raison d’être of these products is to satisfy a need: to impress a user we need to make him understand how he can quickly solve a ‘problem’ with our app. 

User Interface. First impressions are everything! 

Usability and User Interface are closely linked as they act on interdependent domains: those of function and image. The difference between the two is subtle but substantial: while the former focuses more on making a complex set of functions simple, the latter is concerned with making this simplified set attractive. 

A good UI is today an extremely strategic choice: it only takes 50 milliseconds (0.5 seconds) for users to develop an aesthetic opinion about a website that determines their stay. 

User Experience. Give your users a reason to come back! 

In the digital world we often talk about user experience (or UX). But is it really important? Every time we use an app, or a website, we have experiences that trigger positive or negative emotions in us. These emotions are specifically the reason why we will or will not use a particular digital product.  

“Digital solutions should, in fact, enhance the uniqueness of people, integrate seamlessly into their lives and amplify the positive aspects of human nature” 

In Trueblue we started from this awareness to create AiDEA Smart Customer Engagement: the evolution of Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Our AI-based app is able to provide strategic and customized insights from Management to Field Force, even through voice control. The user experience is one of the main focuses of our project, the reason? To create a user-friendly product that would positively revolutionise our customers’ working experience. 

Simone Farina – Visual Designer