Design for Reducing Anxiety

We live in times of information overload. Each notification adds more burden on our conscious mind, which is already dealing with day to day problems. So here I am suggesting some practices to keep the customer less anxious and more aware while interacting with the product-

1. The design should always reassure and point out where the customer is in the interaction flow. We assume that our customers will interact with our application with full concentration, but there are so many other events which can steal their attention. Thus it’s safe to assume that there will be times when they come back and ask, oh where was I now?
2. Similarly, the design should indicate clearly where a button/gesture or any kind of interaction is going to take them. Surprising and delighting is good but some hint of what’s going to happen can’t hurt.
3. Loading screens can have some honest feedback of what’s going on and how much time it will take. Rather than just showing a rotating circle, we can at least have a nicer animation.
4. When the application fails, the design should honestly report upfront what happened and if the customer will lose important data or not.
5. Sometimes when I post on social media or buy/book something, I like to open the application again just to check over that all was as I intended. Maybe we can have a glance over mode in our designs for such returning customers.
6. Not abusing badge app icons and notifications.
7. Using infinite scroll only when necessary, providing the right amount of contextual information is better.

These are some ideas from the top of my head, please do comment and tell me more! Thanks for reading.