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Don't Make Me Work Hard
By Daniel Szuc
Published - April 2008

Gerry Gaffney from Information & Design (http://www.infodesign.com.au/) in his "Humans - A Designers Guide (http://www.infodesign.com.au/articlespresentations/articles/humansadesignersguide.asp)" has a sketch of a man sitting comfortably in front of the TV, using his remote control and not working too hard. Gerry says - "Given a choice between the easy way and the right way, people will choose the easy way."

I have been thinking a lot about this recently in our projects now and over the years as it pertains to improving and simplifying designs and it comes down to this:

"Dont Make Me Work Hard!"

So ... what are some quick examples of products and services that don't make me work hard?

  1. ipod's click wheel to browse, find and play music instead of having to look through a physical CD collection in a draw at home (saves me time)
  2. Autosaves in Google Docs without having to think about finding the save button (lets me focus on my work and not losing my work)
  3. Paying for shopping with an Octopus smart card(http://www.octopuscards.com/consumer/en/index.jsp) without having to take out your wallet or purse looking for money to pay (lets me buy and leave)

Design Philosophy & Choice
I would like to think that these design choices (and they are design choices) are made not by mistake but backed by a solid UX philosophy (http://www.google.com/corporate/ux.html) and vision (http://www.uie.com/events/uiconf/2007/articles/experience_vision/) . Is it that this thinking is imposed on the Product team by a leader or usability team? Or is it that the Product team is already thinking about these choices by putting themselves in the "customers shoes"? Or Both?

Whatever it is, if the Product Team in their design of products & services can make people work less to get to the good stuff faster, you will delight (http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/Delighting_Customers.html) and sell more stuff. People, for the most part, will always choose a faster, easier and better way to do something.

What examples can you think of where you don't have to work hard which made the User Experience all that more pleasurable?

References