Red Routes in UX
What are Red Routes?
User Experience Design plays a major and a very critical role in a digital product creating process. One of the methodologies that is included in the creation of a smooth transition throughout the design process is called, Red Routes. Red routes in a nutshell refer to the paths and journeys that a user experiences while using a digital product, say a mobile app. In this article, I’d like to share my insights on how they are used during the process of UX Design and how much importance they carry when integrated as a step in the design process.
Why Do We Use Red Routes?
Designers use Red Routes by considering and weighing the importance of different journeys that users take to accomplish certain tasks. For example, a very simple task might be to check out an item. The steps to complete that journey starts from adding an item to cart, adding a payment method, filling in the information sections such as name, address etc, then to confirm the checkout process. Of course, in today’s world, we experience many different checkout processes on every website or app we choose to visit, but the overall process is very similar. In order for this checkout process or user journey to be completed smoothly and easily, designers use Red Routes to check the importance of every step in the journey that a digital product offers, categorizing them based on their importance by considering the core functionalities of the product.
How Do We Use Red Routes?
In order to identify Red Routes, UX designers focus on users by conducting thorough user research, analyzing user behavior while also keeping certain business goals in mind. Once the Red Routes become apparent, they become the main point of the design process. What comes after is such significant decisions related to information architecture, user interaction screens, navigation.
What are the Benefits of Red Routes in UX Design?
1- To Improve User Gratification
By optimizing Red Routes, designers make sure users can accomplish their end goals. The easier it is to use and more efficient a product that a user experiences, the more satisfaction users get from using that specific product.
2- Easily Accessible and Clear Navigation
Since Red Routes are very critical with the whole process of achieving an end goal for the users, ensuring that the users follow an easy and always accessible journey to complete their initial goals is the key to less frustration, super easy, user friendly and delightful experience.
3- Success of Digital Products in the Market
This one makes so much sense. Red Routes help designers to identify the very core steps users take, say to make a purchase online. These flows can be but not limited to, adding the product to their cart, completing the checkout process. By examining the user flows and making them easier and more efficient for the users, designers guarantee that more users will be coming back to the online store to purchase more online products from the same business. The result is the inevitable profit that the business will be making based on the rates of returning users because of the sense of achievement that they get from using the business.
Let’s say you wanted to skip implementing the process of Red Routes and went straight into making your app or website look more glamorous in any way you could. There you used the most beautiful images with great icons to accompany them. “Sprinkling a bit of animation and illustrations would not be so bad.”, you thought. What could go wrong with a digital product that looks pretty, right?” Well, I can write pages about what could go wrong but strictly focusing on the Red Routes in this article, I’d like to give you an example.
Example
Imagine a website that has the most amazing pictures of nails, nail polishes and people relaxing at a spa looking happy. You are visiting this website because you are the user in this example, the pictures grab your attention immediately and you are curious to see what kind of services they provide. Is it a nail salon? Do they also have spa services? Are those the nail polishes they use at the nail salon or are they up on the website for sale?
Let’s assume you really want to buy one of the nail polishes you like. You click on it but it takes you to a credit card information directly. Oops! You wanted to see what others say about it first.
Go back, look and find the reviews. Click on the reviews, which takes you to a pop up screen where it asks you to leave a review for the nail polish you had not even purchased yet.
You take a deep breath, wanting to go back to the product page but end up finding the spa options because when you close the pop up window, it directly takes you there.
Getting more frustrated with the user flow of things on this website, wouldn’t you decide to purchase the same color and brand of the nail polish on some other website that at least gives you a peace of mind?
Exactly!
Result
Users who encounter confusion and frustration due to complicated navigation and lack of inconsistency on important tasks, most probably will lose interest in these products. However, implementing Red Routes would be a very deliberate approach to the success of this digital product because of what it would contribute along the way to designing products that are more user centric, focusing on functionality that would increase engagement, bringing higher user satisfaction rates and positive experience.
All things considered, implementing the Red Route approach into the UX design process is very essential because of the critical role it plays in overall design decisions. It not only helps designers to achieve high user satisfaction rates by providing more user- friendly, efficient and useful products but also prioritizes business goals as well. Additionally, there are templates that UX teams can easily find on the web and Figma to utilize right away.
Elif Z.
UX Designer
