In the economy of user effort, be a bargain, not a scam
9 hours ago
- #Product Design
- #User Experience
- #Complexity Management
- Treat user effort as a currency in product design, ensuring that the complexity-to-effort curve is smooth and proportional.
- Alan Kay's principle: 'Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible' is foundational for long-tail UIs.
- Prism's success (2B+ npm downloads) was due to minimizing user effort for common tasks while allowing extensibility for complex ones.
- Google Calendar exemplifies balancing simplicity (one-click event creation) with complexity (recurring events, timezones).
- Usability cliffs occur when slight increases in complexity lead to disproportionate user effort, causing frustration.
- Signal-to-noise ratio in interfaces should be maximized by reducing unnecessary user input and boilerplate.
- User feedback often misses friction issues because they are processed emotionally rather than consciously.
- Friction reduction requires organizational prioritization and tradeoffs, often increasing implementation complexity.
- Examples like the Oslo airport train ticket machine show how prioritizing user needs can lead to groundbreaking simplicity.
- Design principles should prioritize consumers over producers to minimize collective pain and maximize usability.