What are Local Maxima in UX?

User Experience(UX) design ensures smooth navigation and user interaction with the product or services. In UX design A/B testing is done which involves two variants to compare which design is better and when UX designers rely more on A/B testing then Local Maxima occurs.

In this article, we’ll look into what is Local Maxima and why it is an important term to know in UX design.

What are Local Maxima in UX?

In User Experience(UX), local maxima are the points where the UX design seems to be ready for optimal user experience but still, there is room for improvement in design. Local Maxima is the maximum point after which even if you make hundreds of improvements, there will be little improvement in design.

The concept of Local Maxima helps to warn designers to focus more on a user-centric approach rather than only focusing on a data-driven approach. It helps UX designers to provide more optimal and innovative user designs without getting stuck in the process.

Why do Local Maxima occur?

In UX design, local maxima occur when we rely too much on existing data without considering alternative options or wider context related to the design. We can say that when designers only focus on data rather than user feedback or needs then the local maxima occur and even after doing many improvements it will not show a big effect on UX design.

It occurs when designers use data-driven approach from user-testing, analytics and feedback from the user. Designers do not consider other options due to the risk of failure and focus on data-driven approach which results in local maxima.

How to move past the Local Maxima?

If making a thousand of small changes in UX design is not making any difference then we will try two different methods to get past the local maxima. The two methods are mentioned below:

1. Innovative Testing
2. Radical Redesign

1. Innovative Testing:

Innovative testing is one of the method to get past the local maxima. This testing is between making small changes and completely changing design of whole website. In this we try new and creative things to make design more innovative and user-centric to pass the local maxima. This testing helps to make easy and innovative improvements in the UX design and also allow us to learn the use of testing tools and optimization in a better way.

Example: making changes in homepage to make it look better, to improve sign up process for easy use etc.

2. Radical Redesign

This is the method of passing the local maxima where we make big changes in UX design or completely change the design of the website. It can include changes like making checkout process of any website very easy to use, so that user can checkout easily. This method is useful when we have such creative idea where changing the design of whole website will not make the website less user-centric.

Example: Completely redesign the homepage of any website rather than small improvements, big change in the checkout process of website etc.

Local Maxima are Warning Signs

Local Maxima are the maximum points reach in UX design when designers use data-driven approach and not look into wider context. Local Maxima points shows that the approach used by designers is not good enough for optimal User Experience (UX) design. Local Maxima reaches when designers follow A/B testing or other testing techniques to choose better design. Designers have to consider wider user- centric context to improve the design with higher percentage because if we choose data from A/B testing for improvement we will not be able to past the local maxima.

At Local Maxima even if we do hundreds of tweaks for improvement the design will get improved by a minor percent. These points warns designers to improve the design because there is still a room for improvement and pushes them to pass the local maxima to provide more optimal and innovative UX design.

Local maxima point and optimized design point

Uses

Local maxima is useful in User Experience (UX) design in many ways, some of them are mentioned below:

• Decision-Making: Local maxima helps designer in decision making of design improvements, it helps them to change their data-driven approach to user-centric approach to create more optimized design for user experience.
• Continuous Improvement: It pushes designers to make continuous improvements by seeking alternative solutions to provide more impactful and satisfied user experience. Local maxima helps designers to make continuous improvements to pass the local maxima and reach the optimized design point.
• Increasing User Satisfaction: Local maxima can help to provide more satisfies design solutions as designers will have to improve according to the user needs and expectations to cross the local maxima point.

Benefits

Understanding of Local Maxima in UX design can have several benefits mentioned below:

• Drive Innovation: By understanding the concept of local maxima, designers are encouraged to come up with more innovative design solution which will help to promote innovation creativity.
• Optimized User Experience: When designers reach the local maxima due to A/B testing, it allows designers to rethink their ideas by analysing user’s need and requirements will provide more optimized user experience.
• Competitive Advantage: Local Maxima helps organization to stay ahead in the market by continuously improving the products and services. Organizations will be able to differentiate by providing optimized user experience.
• Foster Collaboration: The process to pass the local maxima by seeking alternative solutions will need team work to produce innovative and creative ideas, it will helps to encourage cross-functional team work with the design team to make the improvement.

Conclusion

Understanding local maxima will help designers to provide more optimized and innovative design solutions. It helps us to understand that even if the user experience seems good there can still be a room for improvement. It pushes designers to come up with more creative and innovative ideas which helps to increase team collaboration, promote innovation, providing optimized user satisfaction etc. After hitting local maxima, designers shift their data-driven approach to user-centric approach and look into wider context to pass the local maxima and provide better user experience(UX) design.