A few days ago, I did my part to support the North American car industry by purchasing a Ford Flex. Among the myriad of standard features, Ford (and I’m sure many other manufacturers) has upgraded, compacted and simplified the key fob. This remote entry system used to be a separate piece of equipment dangling from my keychain. Now, it has been integrated into the key itself; it’s overall foot print is smaller and more intuitive — one item gets me into the vehicle.

I’m not trying to sell you a Flex. (You can follow @scottmonty for that.) The point here is that car designers push forward with all of their designs on a macro and micro level. There is always room for improvement on any interface (more times than not, there is lots of room).

Follow these eight recommendations to improve your user experience:

1. Plan your strategy and your user experience before you build
2. Develop a long-term strategy
3. Prototype — e.g. with Axure, or paper prototyping
4. Build a site using a malleable CMS, structure and design
5. Never assume what’s been done in the past is perfect
6. Test and analyze your interface
7. Listen to your users
8. Experiment, but try not to make your users think