Is the interface evil?
The captain obviously told us that the user interface is an integral part of any software and technical product. Since the interface is all that the user can interact with such systems, it is logical to conclude that the interface is some transfer system between the desires (and problems) of the user and the capabilities of the product. And it is reasonable to assume that this system, to put it mildly, does not have a 100% efficiency.
It turns out that the interface is evil, because in fact this is the obstacle (albeit necessary) that prevents us from using the software to the fullest and puts us in the way of achieving our goals. I am sure many of Habr's readers once came to this (at first glance quite reasonable conclusion). Let us now take a closer look at the pros and cons and find out if there is something good in the interfaces.
Picture to attract attention.
Many luminaries of the UX world, such as, for example, Alan Cooper, often repeat the same thought: the ideal interface is the absence of an interface. Consider the reasons why we so want to remove it and which make us think of interfaces as evil :
')
1. time spent
Performing a complex sequence of actions (for example, on the website when buying a ticket), each user thought more than once that it would be ideal to click his fingers and get what he wanted immediately and directly in the required form (respectively, printed air ticket). But really this interface would be perfect without such a click. But even he is not so bad, because instead, the user has to wade through a bunch of uncomfortable forms and confirmations. His dissatisfaction is quite understandable - he knows his goal, but he cannot quickly reach it. His behavior is similar to the behavior of the driver, who suddenly got into a traffic jam for a kilometer or less from the house. The windows are already visible in the distance, but in order to get there you have to spend 5 or 10 minutes in vain. Write the interfaces first minus.
2. Errors
To err is human, and the more complex the interface, the higher the likelihood that the user will do something wrong. Depending on how well errors are handled by the program, the consequences can range from (as in the first case) wasted time to much more serious problems - lost money, lost property, missed event and other unrecoverable problems. And such cases bring much more difficulty to users than just the time spent. Add another fat minus.
3. Time to master
In addition, each interface takes time to deal with it. That is, by the time of its passage, we also add time for mastering, and if the interface is not sufficiently mastered, then the probability of error, as a rule, increases. This is all the more insulting because we use so many interfaces only once. It turns out that in this case we are forced to pay our time twice.
4. Refusal to take action
The obstacles exposed by the interface are more or less likely, but lead to the fact that the user refuses to complete the task, leaves the site or application, does not use the purchased technical novelty (which leads to a decrease in brand loyalty). Maybe the user would like to realize the opportunity that the project gives him, but at some point the complexity level exceeds his loyalty level, he either just refuses his goal, or starts to search for Porter according to Porter’s forces a similar solution or substitute ( for example, do not fly on weekends to Moscow, but just go to the bowling).
It is hundreds, thousands of decisions made by users to refuse to continue their actions with the project and hide behind the words "conversion is falling." Any manager would like to see a 100% conversion, he understands why the interfaces are evil and will gladly put one more minus for them.
5. The interface leads the user to a very winding road, often not exactly where he wants
And here we come to an interesting contradiction. Indeed, the interface is not a sea surface where you can move where you want, but a kind of road network. You can reach your goal in several ways, but only along the paths laid down in the project. Moreover, at times it may turn out that the road to which the user wants is not at all routed (but routed to the next, slightly different), which means that the interface does not allow him to get what he wants.
Why is this happening?
Yes, there are cases when this is done by project managers by stupidity, but let's try to consider this problem at a slightly higher level. Suppose you need to buy a hammer. What would be the perfect interface for you? It is reasonable to assume that, ideally, the hammer should magically appear on your desk. Without wasting time, effort, money. Stop, where is the money? It turns out that the ideal user interface is not very popular among store managers: they might be happy to hire magicians to teleport hammers to people right home at first wish, but they would not really want this to happen for free. In ordinary life, we are all accustomed to the fact that the services we need are required of some concessions from us, but for some reason, when using the programs, they are not always ready to accept it.
When downloading files from many file sharing sites, instead of a simple download button, users are often offered to go through several affiliate pages and wait a bit before their file is available. All this, of course, is very annoying, but it is worth understanding that without this expectation (during which, of course, advertising is shown to them) these services simply could not exist. The perfect file sharing interface simply contradicts a market economy.
In some cases, registration is required to obtain additional features. This is an obstacle for the user, perhaps he is unhappy with the presence of this requirement. But do not be it, the project would be more difficult to gain an audience. Well, the checkboxes displayed during registration (like “set up a Yandex bar” or “send me fresh offers by email”) are also a compromise between the wishes of the user and the needs of the project. Perhaps, as users, all this seems evil to you, but once you become project leaders, you change your opinion quite drastically. In fact, users pay (not with money, but with their actions) and bring benefits to the project.
You can also give an example from the world of retail, which has been improving its interfaces for thousands of years. In some hypermarkets, in principle, hand baskets are not placed. For customers who need to buy food only for a day, it is terribly inconvenient - you have to hang around the store with a huge cart. But this is exactly what benefits these shops: people, taking a cart, are already gaining more. The store intentionally did not offer the user a good interface for solving his tasks, because it is more profitable for a business to provide another interface.
But here the most important thing is not to overdo it. For example, if such a store frankly said: “we don’t serve those who buy less than 5,000 rubles,” this would significantly undermine the loyalty of the general mass of customers, which would naturally lead to a decrease in sales. That is, the interface needs to be created not for the user and not for the manager, but for the needs of the project; the interface should be such that the key project indicators are maximum.
Another interesting feature of hypermarkets has long become well-known. The most popular products (bread, milk, meat, fish) are placed away from the entrance. Why? After all, it would be ideal for the buyer to quickly go to the store, choose the most necessary and not waste too much time. But, of course, this decision is not accidental - on the way to the necessary products, the buyer gains a lot more, the average bill is higher in that case, which, of course, is more beneficial for the store.
We are faced with another feature of the interface - even the simplest interfaces often have a motivating effect. This means that one should not think that a person always determines his goals, every minute and second of his life, and the interface only satisfies these goals. The interface can motivate him to achieve some new goal, from the smallest (such as buying a chocolate bar on the way to the dairy department), to a much more serious one - study Objective C (after reading how many iOS developers earn on the job site), start rolling skiing (seeing photos from the Alps).
Interfaces of social networks have a good motivating property. A user visits a website or a social network application for various reasons - someone wants to scroll through the news, someone saw in the mail that his photo was commented, someone is interested to see how many likes his post has typed. But all these people usually do not leave immediately after the satisfaction of their interest. They continue to walk around the site, and their next step is usually determined by the content that was on the previous one.
Contextual (and not only) advertising is also about motivation. Sometimes it is very close to our desires, then the motivating component is only to open a specific site (which is also not so small), but in some cases we are almost in the head with new desires and offer to satisfy them with a bright and colorful banner. Again, remember the file hosting services, where after starting the file download the user is bored, he just waits for his file to load, so at this moment he is open to new desires; Many entertainment projects actively use traffic from file-sharing networks.
In general, this all seems rather obvious, but there is still a reason why I am writing here: examples of user motivation do not really fit in with the principle of “interface is evil”. After all, if we offered the user an ideal interface from his point of view, for example, buying a book. He would snap his fingers, and the book would be on his desk. But, thanks to our motivating interface, he would not have found 5 more cool, interesting and useful books. It turns out that everyone won from this interface: the store and the user. There may have been difficulties with the purchase, but to call evil such an interface the language does not turn.
Finally leave the sweetest.
Let us recall the situation from the beginning of the article: the driver is stuck in traffic on the way to the house, he already sees the windows of his house, but the traffic jam practically does not move. He is angry and dreams of only one thing: to click his fingers and be there, outside the windows of the house.
And here, it would seem, almost a similar situation: the climber climbs a high mountain. Behind him several heavy climbs, and the top has already appeared because of the haze. It is literally about 200 meters, but there is an ice wall on the way. Time after time he drives metal pins into it, clings to any crack, but lifting is very difficult. From pain he reduces muscles, but one goal - to get to the top. In order to slightly stretch his fingers, he accidentally clicks them once and ... and turns out to be on top.
It would seem that he should be pleased: he wanted to go on top, and here he stands on it. Why is he not happy? The fact is that mountaineering is an auto-body (formed from two ancient Greek words: auto - itself and telos - goal) activity, that is, it has value in itself. A very large layer of what we do relates specifically to auto-body activity: this is the upbringing of children, communication, and sports. It can even include driving a car and, of course, programming.
The term was introduced by one of the most prominent psychologists of our time - an American scientist of Hungarian origin, Mihai Chikszentmihayi. He was very active in studying the phenomenon of happiness and came to the conclusion that people feel most happy when all their attention is subordinated to any activity; It is in this state that creative masterpieces and outstanding achievements are born. Many in conversations with him said that they seemed to be picked up by a stormy river, so Cixentmihayi called this state a state of flow. I am writing this article in one breath, I want to add more quickly, but I also like the process of writing, so I’ve been in the stream for a couple of hours. Well, you, dear habrablitchiteli, once read up to this point, it is also likely to have experienced its easy option - reading is also able to fully capture a person, although this stream can rather be experienced while reading exciting fiction.
Now remember all the games you played. Imagine, for example, that going into Angry Birds, you will see only one button "Win", clicking on which you will receive a message that the birds have defeated all pigs and everything is fine. Obviously, it is pointless that the user enters the game not to defeat the pigs, but to enjoy the process of achieving the same goal. Even games with the free2play model very carefully use payments: if you allow the user to simply buy everything he aspires for, the game will lose its meaning for him, not today, then tomorrow. Nobody wants to lose such an audience, so basic hooks remain the same for both paying and non-paying audiences.
In essence, the interface for the player is the game. Without an interface, it is impossible for a player to achieve a stream status Do not tell him that the interface is evil, for him the interface of the game is the source of his pleasure.
Moreover, we can say that in games everything turns upside down. Errors are not so critical and sometimes even useful. If the user of the game will be easy to cope with it without errors, then his attention is no longer directed to a large extent to the achievement of goals in the game, and the state of the stream disappears. He gets bored playing this game.
“Okay,” you say, “it’s understandable with games, but in other cases we are moving for the sake of the goal, not the process.” But in fact, these things are sometimes very difficult to distinguish. At that moment, when the interface is able to capture a significant portion of user attention, an easy version of the streaming state is born. Thanks to the directed attention, he perceives the information more fully and at this moment is also subject to the influence of the motivating component of the interface. It is on this principle that good landings are built (the pages where the user gets from the advertising link, their task is to hold it so that it is hooked on something). They often consist of 5-6 pages, each of which gives some piece of information about the subject of interest to a person. At first, his interest may not be so high, but each page motivates to read the next one (or, perhaps, perform a simple action on it), the user goes on and on and on, plunging more and more into the environment where he got. Through these 5-6 pages, he, often, is ready to drive in email and subscribe to the newsletter - the thread captured his attention, and the motivating part of the interface put this desire in his head.
In general , I will try to summarize: always think about the perfect interface for each specific situation. In some cases, the ideal interface, of course, is its absence, but in a huge number of cases, the interface is needed, and getting rid of unnecessary clicks or minimizing the time you work with it just for the sake of minimizing time itself will be a very big mistake. Like so much in our life, the interface is both evil and good at the same time.
It turns out that the interface is evil, because in fact this is the obstacle (albeit necessary) that prevents us from using the software to the fullest and puts us in the way of achieving our goals. I am sure many of Habr's readers once came to this (at first glance quite reasonable conclusion). Let us now take a closer look at the pros and cons and find out if there is something good in the interfaces.
Picture to attract attention.
Many luminaries of the UX world, such as, for example, Alan Cooper, often repeat the same thought: the ideal interface is the absence of an interface. Consider the reasons why we so want to remove it and which make us think of interfaces as evil :
')
1. time spent
Performing a complex sequence of actions (for example, on the website when buying a ticket), each user thought more than once that it would be ideal to click his fingers and get what he wanted immediately and directly in the required form (respectively, printed air ticket). But really this interface would be perfect without such a click. But even he is not so bad, because instead, the user has to wade through a bunch of uncomfortable forms and confirmations. His dissatisfaction is quite understandable - he knows his goal, but he cannot quickly reach it. His behavior is similar to the behavior of the driver, who suddenly got into a traffic jam for a kilometer or less from the house. The windows are already visible in the distance, but in order to get there you have to spend 5 or 10 minutes in vain. Write the interfaces first minus.
2. Errors
To err is human, and the more complex the interface, the higher the likelihood that the user will do something wrong. Depending on how well errors are handled by the program, the consequences can range from (as in the first case) wasted time to much more serious problems - lost money, lost property, missed event and other unrecoverable problems. And such cases bring much more difficulty to users than just the time spent. Add another fat minus.
3. Time to master
In addition, each interface takes time to deal with it. That is, by the time of its passage, we also add time for mastering, and if the interface is not sufficiently mastered, then the probability of error, as a rule, increases. This is all the more insulting because we use so many interfaces only once. It turns out that in this case we are forced to pay our time twice.
4. Refusal to take action
The obstacles exposed by the interface are more or less likely, but lead to the fact that the user refuses to complete the task, leaves the site or application, does not use the purchased technical novelty (which leads to a decrease in brand loyalty). Maybe the user would like to realize the opportunity that the project gives him, but at some point the complexity level exceeds his loyalty level, he either just refuses his goal, or starts to search for Porter according to Porter’s forces a similar solution or substitute ( for example, do not fly on weekends to Moscow, but just go to the bowling).
It is hundreds, thousands of decisions made by users to refuse to continue their actions with the project and hide behind the words "conversion is falling." Any manager would like to see a 100% conversion, he understands why the interfaces are evil and will gladly put one more minus for them.
5. The interface leads the user to a very winding road, often not exactly where he wants
And here we come to an interesting contradiction. Indeed, the interface is not a sea surface where you can move where you want, but a kind of road network. You can reach your goal in several ways, but only along the paths laid down in the project. Moreover, at times it may turn out that the road to which the user wants is not at all routed (but routed to the next, slightly different), which means that the interface does not allow him to get what he wants.
Why is this happening?
Yes, there are cases when this is done by project managers by stupidity, but let's try to consider this problem at a slightly higher level. Suppose you need to buy a hammer. What would be the perfect interface for you? It is reasonable to assume that, ideally, the hammer should magically appear on your desk. Without wasting time, effort, money. Stop, where is the money? It turns out that the ideal user interface is not very popular among store managers: they might be happy to hire magicians to teleport hammers to people right home at first wish, but they would not really want this to happen for free. In ordinary life, we are all accustomed to the fact that the services we need are required of some concessions from us, but for some reason, when using the programs, they are not always ready to accept it.
When downloading files from many file sharing sites, instead of a simple download button, users are often offered to go through several affiliate pages and wait a bit before their file is available. All this, of course, is very annoying, but it is worth understanding that without this expectation (during which, of course, advertising is shown to them) these services simply could not exist. The perfect file sharing interface simply contradicts a market economy.
In some cases, registration is required to obtain additional features. This is an obstacle for the user, perhaps he is unhappy with the presence of this requirement. But do not be it, the project would be more difficult to gain an audience. Well, the checkboxes displayed during registration (like “set up a Yandex bar” or “send me fresh offers by email”) are also a compromise between the wishes of the user and the needs of the project. Perhaps, as users, all this seems evil to you, but once you become project leaders, you change your opinion quite drastically. In fact, users pay (not with money, but with their actions) and bring benefits to the project.
You can also give an example from the world of retail, which has been improving its interfaces for thousands of years. In some hypermarkets, in principle, hand baskets are not placed. For customers who need to buy food only for a day, it is terribly inconvenient - you have to hang around the store with a huge cart. But this is exactly what benefits these shops: people, taking a cart, are already gaining more. The store intentionally did not offer the user a good interface for solving his tasks, because it is more profitable for a business to provide another interface.
But here the most important thing is not to overdo it. For example, if such a store frankly said: “we don’t serve those who buy less than 5,000 rubles,” this would significantly undermine the loyalty of the general mass of customers, which would naturally lead to a decrease in sales. That is, the interface needs to be created not for the user and not for the manager, but for the needs of the project; the interface should be such that the key project indicators are maximum.
Another interesting feature of hypermarkets has long become well-known. The most popular products (bread, milk, meat, fish) are placed away from the entrance. Why? After all, it would be ideal for the buyer to quickly go to the store, choose the most necessary and not waste too much time. But, of course, this decision is not accidental - on the way to the necessary products, the buyer gains a lot more, the average bill is higher in that case, which, of course, is more beneficial for the store.
We are faced with another feature of the interface - even the simplest interfaces often have a motivating effect. This means that one should not think that a person always determines his goals, every minute and second of his life, and the interface only satisfies these goals. The interface can motivate him to achieve some new goal, from the smallest (such as buying a chocolate bar on the way to the dairy department), to a much more serious one - study Objective C (after reading how many iOS developers earn on the job site), start rolling skiing (seeing photos from the Alps).
Interfaces of social networks have a good motivating property. A user visits a website or a social network application for various reasons - someone wants to scroll through the news, someone saw in the mail that his photo was commented, someone is interested to see how many likes his post has typed. But all these people usually do not leave immediately after the satisfaction of their interest. They continue to walk around the site, and their next step is usually determined by the content that was on the previous one.
Contextual (and not only) advertising is also about motivation. Sometimes it is very close to our desires, then the motivating component is only to open a specific site (which is also not so small), but in some cases we are almost in the head with new desires and offer to satisfy them with a bright and colorful banner. Again, remember the file hosting services, where after starting the file download the user is bored, he just waits for his file to load, so at this moment he is open to new desires; Many entertainment projects actively use traffic from file-sharing networks.
In general, this all seems rather obvious, but there is still a reason why I am writing here: examples of user motivation do not really fit in with the principle of “interface is evil”. After all, if we offered the user an ideal interface from his point of view, for example, buying a book. He would snap his fingers, and the book would be on his desk. But, thanks to our motivating interface, he would not have found 5 more cool, interesting and useful books. It turns out that everyone won from this interface: the store and the user. There may have been difficulties with the purchase, but to call evil such an interface the language does not turn.
Finally leave the sweetest.
Let us recall the situation from the beginning of the article: the driver is stuck in traffic on the way to the house, he already sees the windows of his house, but the traffic jam practically does not move. He is angry and dreams of only one thing: to click his fingers and be there, outside the windows of the house.
And here, it would seem, almost a similar situation: the climber climbs a high mountain. Behind him several heavy climbs, and the top has already appeared because of the haze. It is literally about 200 meters, but there is an ice wall on the way. Time after time he drives metal pins into it, clings to any crack, but lifting is very difficult. From pain he reduces muscles, but one goal - to get to the top. In order to slightly stretch his fingers, he accidentally clicks them once and ... and turns out to be on top.
It would seem that he should be pleased: he wanted to go on top, and here he stands on it. Why is he not happy? The fact is that mountaineering is an auto-body (formed from two ancient Greek words: auto - itself and telos - goal) activity, that is, it has value in itself. A very large layer of what we do relates specifically to auto-body activity: this is the upbringing of children, communication, and sports. It can even include driving a car and, of course, programming.
The term was introduced by one of the most prominent psychologists of our time - an American scientist of Hungarian origin, Mihai Chikszentmihayi. He was very active in studying the phenomenon of happiness and came to the conclusion that people feel most happy when all their attention is subordinated to any activity; It is in this state that creative masterpieces and outstanding achievements are born. Many in conversations with him said that they seemed to be picked up by a stormy river, so Cixentmihayi called this state a state of flow. I am writing this article in one breath, I want to add more quickly, but I also like the process of writing, so I’ve been in the stream for a couple of hours. Well, you, dear habrablitchiteli, once read up to this point, it is also likely to have experienced its easy option - reading is also able to fully capture a person, although this stream can rather be experienced while reading exciting fiction.
Now remember all the games you played. Imagine, for example, that going into Angry Birds, you will see only one button "Win", clicking on which you will receive a message that the birds have defeated all pigs and everything is fine. Obviously, it is pointless that the user enters the game not to defeat the pigs, but to enjoy the process of achieving the same goal. Even games with the free2play model very carefully use payments: if you allow the user to simply buy everything he aspires for, the game will lose its meaning for him, not today, then tomorrow. Nobody wants to lose such an audience, so basic hooks remain the same for both paying and non-paying audiences.
In essence, the interface for the player is the game. Without an interface, it is impossible for a player to achieve a stream status Do not tell him that the interface is evil, for him the interface of the game is the source of his pleasure.
Moreover, we can say that in games everything turns upside down. Errors are not so critical and sometimes even useful. If the user of the game will be easy to cope with it without errors, then his attention is no longer directed to a large extent to the achievement of goals in the game, and the state of the stream disappears. He gets bored playing this game.
“Okay,” you say, “it’s understandable with games, but in other cases we are moving for the sake of the goal, not the process.” But in fact, these things are sometimes very difficult to distinguish. At that moment, when the interface is able to capture a significant portion of user attention, an easy version of the streaming state is born. Thanks to the directed attention, he perceives the information more fully and at this moment is also subject to the influence of the motivating component of the interface. It is on this principle that good landings are built (the pages where the user gets from the advertising link, their task is to hold it so that it is hooked on something). They often consist of 5-6 pages, each of which gives some piece of information about the subject of interest to a person. At first, his interest may not be so high, but each page motivates to read the next one (or, perhaps, perform a simple action on it), the user goes on and on and on, plunging more and more into the environment where he got. Through these 5-6 pages, he, often, is ready to drive in email and subscribe to the newsletter - the thread captured his attention, and the motivating part of the interface put this desire in his head.
In general , I will try to summarize: always think about the perfect interface for each specific situation. In some cases, the ideal interface, of course, is its absence, but in a huge number of cases, the interface is needed, and getting rid of unnecessary clicks or minimizing the time you work with it just for the sake of minimizing time itself will be a very big mistake. Like so much in our life, the interface is both evil and good at the same time.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/173073/
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