A UX perspective on Dubai

I have returned from a week’s vacation in Dubai visiting my sister-in-law and brother-in-law with my wife. It was a mind blowing experience seeing such a young, yet highly developed city rising out of the deserts of the United Arab Emirates. Dubai has adopted a ‘no-holds-barred’ approach to architecture where seemingly structures and buildings rise out of the sea on reclaimed land. What I found fascinating and completely different to any other city I have visited is how Dubai groups and labels alike businesses, institutions and amenities. For instance, if I were to be visiting the offices of a local or international newspaper then I would be heading for Media City where I could find them all in the same locale. We drove past Internet City which housed side-by-side no less than Microsoft, Hewlett Packard Invent, Cisco, Oracle, 3M et al. I also spotted Festival City as well as a number of other areas either named City or Village.

Taking a UX viewpoint, this makes a lot of sense. Both local inhabitants and visitors of Dubai can orientate themselves quickly and easily in relation to these landmarks. If they are looking for something specific which is housed by one of these area taxonomies, they not only experience the brand of choice but also related brands as well as those in direct competition. You can imagine how this grouping would work on a website. Choosing a top level navigation item labelled Internet Businesses would allow you to arrive at a page which offers the entire Internet based companies within the area. An aside column could present businesses which are related to the Internet based companies such as electronic device manufacturers. If I were to select a Microsoft specific page the aside column could then reflect both competitive businesses and related industries. The experience and user journeys available are far improved when you can see exactly which companies are housed within the area and how they relate to one another.

I can see how complimentary businesses can offer an overall better experience to customers and businesses alike. But, it would be interesting to explore and know how those companies in direct competition work together living in such proximity. Does it create a sense of community where knowledge share is ubiquitous? Or, does it make them work harder to establish themselves as the thought leaders in a big game of cat and mouse?

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Tags: dubai, User Experience, ux

This entry was posted on Monday, October 26th, 2009 at 9:06 am and is filed under Usability, User Experience. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.