Beer Goggles #2 - User Un-friendly Design
Rage against the machine.
If you are anything like me, then whenever you get the weekly screen time notification from your phone, two thoughts race through your brain.
Holy shit, a new high score!
Holy shit, did I really spend that much time on my phone in one week?
It can be pretty confronting when you realise you’ve spent a whole chunk of your week staring at the same few square inches of space with nothing to show for it but a sore neck, tired eyes, and a callus developing on the part of your pinky where the phone sits.
So what is it about these little black boxes that keep us coming back for more?
It might have a lot to do with how the software is designed to include certain triggers and queues to pull us in.
The ding as the screen lights up with a new notification. If you initially had enough self-control to not look straight away, then something in the back of your mind will gnaw away until you give it a glance... and just another spam text.
Then there are the apps that employ all sorts of techniques to keep the stimulation going. With the ability to endlessly doom scroll through feeds and short-form content, or the gamification of regular activities like learning a language or exercising complete with collectables, daily quests, and leaderboards.
In a world where developers are in a constant struggle over what is left of our attention spans, it makes sense that they would create the perfect little honey pot for us to keep dipping our hands into.
If ever there was a line drawn at the point when we’ve gone too far, it was crossed a long time ago, somewhere between the inception of the Duolingo bird and split screen TikToks (because who doesn't want to watch a celebrity interview and origami tutorial at the same time).
I think it’s time we really considered if this is the sort of innovation we want to encourage (the kind that pacifies us)?
Because if you ask me, it’s starting to get a bit Huxleyan at this point. And now that we’re hooked it’s going to be a whole lot harder to get back on the wagon.
But fear not, because what can be over-engineered, can surely be under-engineered as well.
Enter user un-friendly design.
Apple is a textbook example of simple and easy to navigate user interfaces. So much so that simplicity has become a companywide ethos present in all their products. This is largely due to the influence and principles of one of the company’s founders, Steve Jobs.
Jobs was an individual intent on perfecting even the most minute detail of each product. From the layout of the circuit board inside the computer or even the distance between characters in a typeface, it had to be easy to use and look beautiful. One of his most famous design principles was the ‘3 click rule,’ being that if he couldn’t navigate to something on an interface within 3 clicks, it was too difficult. This has been an enduring idea within User Interface design.
So perhaps the inverse is also true, if we want to use our screens less why limit ourselves to 3 clicks? Why not push for 10 or 20? The goal being to make using our phones so frustrating and difficult that there will be nothing else to do but throw it across the room and promise ourselves never again.
That is until...ding!
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