Today, anything that is not instant is not worth it. The title of the book is "Don't make me think!" If you make me think than you are doing it wrong. Not to say that intuitive design is bad, but if done wrong it can be a direct contributor to the microwave mentality.
We cater to the busy man. The one that has no time to read all the article. In order to please him we dedicate the first paragraph to a Too long didn't read (tl;dr) version of the article just so he can be satisfied. We remove all the steps in the registration page, moving it from a two and a half minutes process to a few seconds. Because we don't want to lose his attention.
We need to catch him before he starts thinking.
On the analytics side, we get frustrated when we see those visitors that left the website just after 2 seconds. What can we do to get their attention? Cleavage? Naked girls? Anything to get his attention.
Lots of SEO Vloggers suggest to only create short videos on YouTube to get more views. What if you can't say everything in 2 minutes and 17 seconds. The busy man has no time for a 5 minute video.
The busy man only has 48 hours to spare to learn JavaScript. The busy only has 24 hours to get more friends on your new social network. Only has 12 hours to decide which shoe to buy. Only has 10 minutes to wait for that email. Only has 2 minutes to read that long article you wrote. Only has 30 seconds to know what your product does. Only 8 seconds to register on your website. The busy man has only 2 seconds to spare to like your website.
What happens if you don't cater to him? You will never see him again. This busy man has no time for you. And you know what? You should have no time for him either.
By catering to the busy man, we are ruining it for all those that make the effort. Sometimes the effect is not felt immediately, but on the long term you see reddit like content on respectable newspapers. We ruin it so much that we can't even point the cause of the problem anymore.
By adding TL;DR on top of an article, we are getting more page views. Which is not necessarily from the audience we are catering to. As a result, we will create shorter content to get more page views. It will look great in the reports, but what happens to those who came in to read the long and well crafted articles.
By making account creating too easy, we are allowing anyone to register, including those who will create an account and never come back. On your reports you will see amazing numbers, but those will be ghost accounts.
By catering to the learn C++ in 2 days folks, we are saturating the markets for jobs, making it harder for those experienced programmers to have their resume seen in the first place.
Because of the busy man, the Animal Planet channel is about realty shows. The History channel is about Pawn stars. MTV does not show music. Not that those can't be great, but they cater to the lowest common denominator.
Catering to him, creates these addictive games you play that only targets your emotional response without creating any substance. You will forget the game you just played and spent a fortune on for the next one that is now the cool new thing in town.
Click to win
Think memes, think instant gratification. Repeat whatever you saw on twitter because if not you will be too late. Write the news before you know any details about it just so you can be the first, the fastest. Don't think. Don't think. Don't think!
Is it just me or is so called bad UX starting to look appealing.
In web standards, the guitar has one of the worst UX. If the guitar was a website, it will pop an alert box as it loads than redirects you to a page that forces you to download a java applet with no progress bar. You have to send in an email in a specific format in order to register. And when you manage to register, you would have to download a bunch of .wav files randomly named. To top it all, you can only connect to it via dial up otherwise you get an alert box when you are done downloading and it cancels everything.
That's the guitar, if it was a website. Not so user friendly. But ask any guitarist, they will tell you their love story with this magical musical instrument. Their struggle to learn despite all the difficulties. She's a beauty
It takes 10 years to master c++. It takes months to master Ms Word. It takes a few reread to grasp a good book. It takes time to do anything worthwhile.
The only things that are designed to be mastered instantly are those that feed our microwave mentality. Makes us addicted. I'm longing for bad UX cause at least it makes me think.
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