How can interaction designers improve the controllability of products?

Whether it's a progress bar, a point of action, or a form, it hides the advanced techniques that interactive designers use to "trick" users. In a "self-control" best-selling, user control is extremely strong era, improve product controllability is an excellent interactive designer of the required course. Today this dry goods, to help you in-depth exploration of the controllability of the interactive design.

Interaction designers pursue the ultimate user experience. However, the experience of the product in many use scenarios is unpredictable and can not be taken care of using conventional design methods. It's like getting caught in a traffic jam and traveling in bad weather. This situation occurs (for example, the user's mobile network problems), how to appease users, and even further, how to not let users perceive the appearance of this situation, designers are consistent in the study to solve the problem.

Based on the research of psychology, it is one of the ways to solve this problem by using some tricks in the design to distract the user by "confusing" or "deceiving" users, or to make them think that they are not in a bad experience. This is like magic, the audience to see the experience of the magician created by the "Illusion", "scam" to obtain the pleasure, but this does not say that the magician's moral problems, as well as designers, we are in the service for users. The author of the following translation, Marli Mesibov, introduces the user's pursuit of "controllability", as well as the designer's thinking about the design and scheme of "controllability" given to users.

Enter the translation below.

Every day, I stand at the intersection of the door at home, will subconsciously press the "cross the Road" button, and then I have to continue waiting for a while, and so on the road after the lights on I can cross the road. Finally one day I suddenly whim, did not press "cross the Road" the button, after a while the indicator light still lit up. That every day I will click on the Cross Road Button press and not the results are the same! Press and do not press, traffic lights will be in accordance with the preset rhythm red, green ...

In that case, is it necessary to set up a button to cross the road?

The buttons, which are not actually functional, are called "placebo buttons", and they are actually everywhere: crosswalk, subway stations, and automatic temperature regulators. They don't have the actual functionality, they just give the user a sense that I can do it manually even in the automatic operating system.

Sounds strange, why to give the user this feeling? Why deceive users? Because users always want to have the feeling of autonomy! A careful study of the three different form designs described below can help us understand the above conclusions. These three programs are used in an online registration form that applies to participate in the local talent show.

Scheme one, the user opens a form, and the cursor is automatically positioned in the first column of the form: name. When the user fills out the name of the TA, the cursor automatically jumps to the birthday and then the address. The further down, the more complex the information the form needs to fill out. The user is unsure how to answer the current column question "Why Apply for Account", so Ta tries to jump to the next question. Unfortunately, the form does not allow TA to skip the problem, and TA must write something in the current column to jump to the next question.

Scenario two, the user opens the form, and the cursor automatically navigates to the first column again: name. However, this time the user has the autonomy of control, users can choose whether or not to fill in this column information, can at any time in any case submit the form, whether TA has completed the form of all the options. However, candidates who are not fully filled out of the form will have a smaller chance of being chosen to join the talent show.

Programme III, when the user opens the form and follows the concept that the user can operate autonomously, TA can skip the question completely according to his own ideas (like scenario two), but when the TA submits the form, a false hint will appear, informing TA that all the options need to be filled out before submitting the form.

Most users tend to plan III, which gives users a high degree of freedom to fill out or skip options, while ensuring that the form can be fully filled out before being submitted for review. In other words, users get a sense of safe automation and autonomic operation. In this article, we discuss why we have controllable needs, how to create this feeling, and whether the placebo button is reasonable in the user experience design.

　　The need to be controllable

The human need for autonomous control is innate. Abraham Maslow, a renowned psychologist, points out that the most basic human needs are physical needs, namely health, food and sleep. To meet these needs, humans need a lot of controllability, control of the environment in which we live to get enough food, self-control to avoid disease, and so on.

It is not surprising, therefore, that human beings are trying to find the demand for control in everything or desire. Everyone learns to control everything in life from birth, and only when things are in our hands can we feel comfortable and feel safe.

What we call control here is very similar to what psychologists call internal control, which is roat by the social learning theorist, j.rotter, in which individuals recognize the power to control their lives in the context of their surroundings (including their mental environment), That is, everyone's understanding and orientation about their behavior and the consequences of their actions. The former refers to the internal causes (such as ability, effort, etc.) that ascribe responsibility to the individual, and the latter refers to factors (such as environmental factors, luck, etc.) that ascribe responsibility or cause to the individual itself.

As an interactive designer, we try to make sure that users get a positive experience when using our products or services. This is often done by giving users more autonomy through the tools we provide to help them gain internal control. In other words, we let users feel that they have been given more operational autonomy. As Nadine Kintscher (Sitback Solutions's interactive advisor) in the following paragraph:

"Today, you are free to adjust the brightness of your screen, turn off application notifications, decide whether to connect to a mobile phone's wireless network, and so on, although these can only prolong your phone's battery for a few minutes, but you're satisfied with a sense of accomplishment: you can completely control your phone, you can adjust all the settings! (In fact, you can't control the battery life of your cell phone!) "

Kintscher's view is that "a sense of control is much more important than the ability of the user to actually control the battery life of the phone."

Sensory experience and "deception"

Interactive designers are very good at deceiving users! From Instagram to Microsoft, interactive designers have been using endless scams to get users a better user experience! Here are a few examples.

Instagram always pretends to run smoothly.

When Instagram loses a network connection, it is theoretically unable to load new images and update feedback when the user clicks on "like" operations. But in fact, Instagram to the user: I am working normally! As shown in the figure above, Instagram is designed to show the user that it is running smoothly, even in the absence of a network, where the user's action record is stored locally, And rerun the user's actions after the network is restored. For users, this is cheating them. Not really! When the user clicks the "Like" button, the system does not store and update the status at the first time, and TA's friends do not see this status update. This may be called a trick, when the system is connected to the network, the "like" status will be quickly updated.

　The progress bar is a sham.

Whether it's on the PC or on the Mac, we all get a progress bar that prompts you to download it. We've all been through a long "1 minutes" moment! Obviously, the timeline is not the same as the actual time we are waiting for, but it doesn't affect the designers ' love of the progress bar.

A few years ago, John Herrman, the famous engineer, wrote an article explaining why the progress bar was deceiving users. Briefly, the download speed is inconsistent, unpredictable, there are many factors restricting the download speed, the system can not accurately calculate when the download completed. The purpose of the progress bar is to make the user feel that the download time is shorter. This is called time design in psychology, and by designing a progress bar, the user feels that the progress load is faster than it actually is. After a series of tests, Herrman designed the fastest, but actually deceptive, progress bar pattern in the senses: when the schedule actually loads, the progress bar moves faster, along with the animation effect of rolling back ripples.

　The level and manner of "deception"

Obviously, "Everyone does it" is not enough to explain why the user is deceived. We live in the information age, and everyone who reads and reads the newspaper knows that the current media are criticizing big internet companies, like Facebook, Google, Android, and Amazon, criticizing them for concealing information from their users. The hidden information includes vague personal privacy settings and the lack of a clear message to the public as to which institutions and individuals the user's personal data belongs to, and who can trace the data to the user's location. Users want to know the truth in order to be more autonomous in making decisions when using Internet products and encountering problems.

When we face a lot of information and countless ambiguous options, we tend to be paralyzed and unable to make a choice (choose Syndrome, think about the scene when you buy clothes from Taobao). In this case, the message from the scene becomes worthless, back to the beginning of the example of crossing the road, assuming that when the traffic lights are not "crossing the Road" button can be pressed, we can only wait, lost control, which often let us become helpless, impatient, this is a bad user experience. If we find in the office that the knob that is often used to adjust the temperature is actually a "placebo button" and does not have any function, it will make us feel lost inside control, will make us more anxious.

This is very difficult to balance, and whether the use of "deception" to gain a good experience is what designers need to consider, and then let us provide several scenarios that do not need to confuse the facts, but provide the user with a true and controllable experience.

　High degree of freedom to encourage operations

In the previous example, we discussed three kinds of scenarios for filling out forms. In the third scenario, the user is motivated by a more liberal choice to fill out the form, and the system does not force the user to know that all options have to be filled out and that the user is not "deceived". This high degree of freedom can be referenced by other scenarios. For example, online education allows users to choose to combine a "complete course", or to provide more than one way to complete a task (for example, users can click the "Finish" button to complete the task, or click on the "Next question" in the page to complete the task)

　　Enrich the control of secondary functions

There is a saying: "Let your brother decide what you don't care about". It can also be used in experiential design. This is why banks allow users to select pictures of their profiles and let us customize the pictures on the credit card (free of charge). These insignificant decisions both make the user feel controllable and distract us from the issues that really need to be decided autonomously.

　Quasi materialization

Simulating real-world behavior and things in the digital world can improve the user's experience of the product. Skype simulates this in a user's call as a "pause noise" in a phone call, because a full mute will remind the user that the call is over. Full silence may allow users to learn in the use of digital phones can appear in the call interval, which in the real world analog signal phone is not possible, because the technology can not do. But seemingly unnecessary analog "pause noise" can make the user feel happy, not worried about whether the call is broken.

　Ethical standards in interactive design

Ethical judgments about "placebo" components in interactive design are complex. Placebos are widely used in the treatment of diseases. Olivia Judson, a New York Times commentator, once said: "Because cheating patients is immoral, some critics point out that placebos should not be allowed in clinical therapy." "In the field of interaction, the" placebo "component does not cause physical harm to users, and they should not even be considered deceptive. The refresh button has no real effect on many Web applications, because these Web apps are automatically loaded with updates, but they still retain the component. In Uber applications, users can track the current location of taxis and determine where they come from, but this does not actually help reduce the user's waiting time.

All we can do is question the interactive design of these potential "spoofing" users and test the user experience for real users to see how they really react. Ask the target user whether they care about the design or prefer it. Consider the following three basic questions:

1. How did this information help the user?

2. How does this "cheat" design help the user?

3. How will users react if they have all the information available to me?

As a designer, our job is to design when users need to operate, when they need security, and when to let them have the sense of ownership control. As long as in our hearts, we are in the help of users, then we have the commanding heights of morality, we will be able to make bold decisions in the design!