A common urban legend states that NASA spent a large amount of money to develop a pen that would write in space (the result purportedly being the Fisher Space Pen), while the Soviets just used pencils. Like most urban legends, there is a grain of truth: NASA began to develop a space pen, but when development costs skyrocketed the project was abandoned and astronauts went back to using pencils, along with the Soviets.


Is it faster than the stuff I use today?

Dear fellow designers: please make sure that the physical task you are trying to ‘revolutionize’ takes less time on your system than it normally takes.

Any digital service is created for bigger efficiency at some point of the customer journey: you get things faster, cheaper or smarter. There are countless applications that offer you guidance towards better choices at work or everyday life. Choose better commuting routes, exercise more efficiently, heal your skin with better diet, the list is long. All of those apps are created with best intentions, they are beautifully designed and engineered and yet, most of them have less users they should.

Why? Because they take more effort to use than they give in return.

UX designer Golden Krishna gave a wonderful speech at SXSW about “best interface being no interface”, giving an example of BMW Remote car app that makes opening a car door harder than using the simple key. On contrary, ten years earlier Mercedes Benz introduced the Keyless Go system that allows users to open the door if the key is in proximity of the car. Is it faster than using old key? Yes.

To keep it simple, I drew this little scheme:

The ‘job’ is what the user wants to get done. They want to open the car door. Buy a bottle of wine. Get home faster. And your new alternative has to be faster than the existing one. Please measure that.