In the last week, I seem to be noticing friction everywhere.
A friend set up an online meeting and mentioned that the process is harder with a specific online tool than before; then someone told me they went to a website they have used before but found it hard this time. I myself bought a bottle of flat spring water when I meant to get a bottle of sparkling water.
In each case, you could argue the person was not paying attention or that the experience is poor and should be improved.
But I have my own conspiracy theory after reading the book “Enshittification”, by Cory Doctorow.
The book is excellent and looks at a systemic issue to do with weak regulation, monopoly businesses and selfish pursuit of profit at the expense of customers and suppliers.
But buying the wrong bottle of water is probably not about big tech tricking me into becoming locked into network effects and unable to leave. It was just a dumb mistake.
But dumb mistakes are part of usability and even old school human factor analysis. Designing to stop errors and to make completing a task or goal is kind of the point of usability for me.
Years ago, I used human factor analysis as part of designing processes. I came up with good designs and then worked with change managers to get people to adopt them.
I noticed two types of change management. One co-designed better ways of working alongside the users. The other simply dictated the ‘right’ change, pushed for compliance, and crushed resistance—viewing push-back as a lack of buy-in rather than valid feedback. To be fair people called it managing resistance rather than crushing it, but the thinking was that resistance was something to eradicate.
Resistance was assumed to be a lack of understanding or buy-in, rather than a valid perspective that should cause the implementation of something to evolve based on new information and co-creation.
That experience in the mindset behind how we manage change has stuck with me ever since.
More recently I noticed that customer support roles seemed to be transforming into a role that is about turning customer touch points into opportunities to up-sell or cross sell. So if I went back to the supermarket and said I picked up the wrong bottle of water, the check-out professional would suggest that instead of exchanging for a fizzy water I might try a new flavoured fizzy water with vitamin goodness.
It would slow my interaction down, potentially boost profits but not make anything easier or better for me.
I think I see a similar thing happening with online interactions and product development. I have only weak signals to support my conspiracy theory and I don’t know that it is actually a conspiracy.
I think it is an accidental shift based on context and the pressure to hit business goals without really aligning them with customer ease and joy.
Ideally a product team would create an opportunity map to identify their business goals and align customer opportunities to them. Thus creating solutions that make life better for the customer in a way that creates business value for the enterprise (or mission success for purpose based organisations).
Ideally a designer or product owner looking at a process or experience would remove friction and focus on ease of use and better goal achievement for the user.
But if that is true then things should be really easy by now. Web pages should be pop-up free and never ask you to download an app just to enter or read information.
What I think is happening though is that product people are starting to think like the change managers of old. They are wondering how to get people to do what they, the enterprise, want them to do. They are not really digging into how to help users achieve their jobs to be done with the least pain and the greatest gain.
I think the mindset of the designer will become embedded into any product or service that they create. So if I am interacting with a product and it is designed to manipulate me to provide more information, pay more or do something I didn’t intend to do, then that changes the nature of the interaction.
Where I interact with things designed to help me then I can relax, go with the flow and achieve my goals. I am happy if the organisation also benefits.
If every interface is designed to extract something from me rather than assist me, I’m forced to navigate the digital world like a primate in a dangerous jungle. If you design your product like a predator instead of a servant, why would I engage?
OK – maybe you are not conspiring to design your product to prey on me or manipulate me. But I do feel like some of the interactions I have had with products and services lately have forgotten about making things easy for me and seem to have focused on what the provider wants from me or wants me to do for them.
When I moved from project management to product management I found it really exciting. My peers and I all believed that building great products wasn’t about tricking users into compliance; it was about removing friction.
I understand the need for profit and the benefit of aligning to business goals, but I think it shows when an experience has been designed as a business value extraction engine rather than a friction-less, safe and easy to navigate experience.
So a call out to the people creating all the interactions. Being customer focused like someone who cares is different to being customer focused in the way a lion could say it is antelope focused.
If you really are part of a deliberate conspiracy to manipulate people to extract value from them, then maybe ask yourself “when did I choose to become evil?” and then “How might I better serve my goal of being nasty without incurring the subtle but persistent feeling that I am doing something meaningless?”
But if it is not really an evil conspiracy, as I think is a lot more likely, then maybe it is more that we have drifted away from our purpose due to the context we are in and the rush of getting things done.
If that is the cause, the fix is a simple reflection.
Just pause for a moment and ask yourself: ‘Who am I designing this for?’, ‘What will be better for them as a result of this change?’, and ‘What would we do here if that were true?’
