Understanding the Kano Model — A Tool for Sophisticated Designers

UX Strategy with Jared Spool, a Center Centre — UIE newsletter focused on bringing UX to a strategic level inside your organization.

Years ago, when Flickr, the photo-sharing website, first appeared on the scene, the designers delighted their users with a variety of interesting innovations. One of those innovations was something that now seems strikingly simple in concept: a customized home page.

At that time, practically every other website had a standard home page. When a user typed in the site’s main URL, they saw an identical page to every other user.

Flickr’s page was different. When registered users typed Flickr​.com into their browser’s address bar, they saw a personalized page complete with their own latest uploads and recent pictures from their friends and contacts. We interviewed users who told us they found the personalized page very exciting, including the happy “Hello” that appeared in a different language each time they visited.

It wasn’t very long before other sites started incorporating similar capabilities. We saw many sites with a personalized dashboard showing recent activity. We even saw other sites copy the multilingual greeting prompt.