We live in a world that teaches us to continually seek out the new shiny thing. Nicole Wallace looks at why what we actually need is time and what this means for UX teams.
Think back…a little bit further…back to what some may have called “a simpler time”. By “simpler”, we often mean “fewer”, as in fewer products, fewer features, fewer options. Some would argue, we seemed to enjoy a deeper sense of satisfaction and experience greater meaning through those fewer things we had.
Remember when the aspirational fashion runways came alive for two seasons a year? That’s right, the Spring/Summer and the Autumn/Winter lineups. Now, depending on where your fashions trend, we have as many as 52 micro seasons a year. Remember that concept of inherited furniture or the excitement over the La-Z Boy recliner that you knew would one day be all yours, because it would last long after the kids grew up and left the house? Fast forward to today, and interior design trends would have us do a full house swap at least once a year, just to keep up with what’s on its way in, but will most certainly be out of trend by the time the boxes arrive. In today’s world, “fast” is key, and it’s no longer just fast food — it’s fast fashion, fast furniture, and inevitably, fast… software?
Anyone working in the SaaS world can attest to the pressures to continually invent, innovate, and ship new and shiny things to our customers. Why do we do this? To keep them happy and engaged of course! But are they? We’re well aware that it takes more than just the insertion of new features to delight our customers, and that even the right feature, presented in the wrong way at the wrong time can cause more harm than good. In fact, it’s quite common for product creators to come to the startling realization that despite their best efforts to give their customers more, users’ self-reports of customer happiness and satisfaction are often considerably lower than what that company perceives.
So…what’s missing? Perhaps the answer lies in the way that we gain and sustain motivation, and ultimately, satisfaction within ourselves and with the products we use every day.
The Road to Mastery
Deep within the path to user satisfaction lies a simple, yet powerful concept — mastery. Daniel Pink, in his book Drive, defines mastery as “the feeling I am getting better at things that matter, by getting feedback”. And where does this feedback come from? Well, it’s doing something, observing the outcome, learning from that, and then doing it again, a little bit better this time. Experts in motivational psychology such as Edward Deci have shown time and time again that when it comes to complex or cognitive-based tasks, this sense of mastery, along with autonomy and purpose, play a key role in intrinsic motivation and personal satisfaction.
Repeated exposure and even failure are all integral steps on that journey to mastery, but these steps can’t happen if we’re pressured to learn or move on to the next thing before we’ve even gotten a little bit comfortable with the first. The same is true for us as users of any product; when we’re deprived of that opportunity for mastery in the products we use, either because we’re being perpetually distracted by shiny new features, or because the existing ones simply aren’t complete or functional enough to sustain repeated exposure and feedback, we’re left not feeling quite as happy or engaged as we could be.
How UX Can Help Lead Users to Mastery
So what can we do as UX practitioners to build products that will lead our users to mastery? Here are 3 things that you can try (or at least discuss and ponder) today:
- Examine the way we promote and reward — if product success is only linked to the volume of things and features we create, then that is naturally what our product development will reflect. But, if we begin to also define product success through the lens of user experience and satisfaction, then we can make space to work on the elements that truly enhance that.
- Review churn and negative feedback reports with the goal of learning, and not simply responding (or salvaging) — I get it, it’s never fun hearing all the reasons that people don’t like your product, and even worse, why they chose to leave. And while individual users or clients may speak to a desire for a new feature here and there, if you zoom out and look at that data in its entirety, you may find patterns related to a frustrating user experience, and low trust in the product to do what it says it will. This leaves users less likely to give your product the time needed for mastery, and less opportunity to gain the satisfaction that comes from that. Review this data with the goal of learning, and then create an action plan to address the areas that are suffering the most.
- If resources allow, consider a dedicated team focused on enhancement and optimization — “innovation teams” are everywhere and we don’t think twice about the value of a team whose sole purpose is to create new and shiny things. Yet, it’s rare that we’ll see a team or triad zoned in on continuously improving what we already have.
We live in a world that teaches us to indulge in and continually seek out the new shiny thing, and that probably explains why when companies realize that their customers are not as happy or satisfied with a product as they thought they’d be, their instinctive response is to give them more. And maybe they do need more…but what if, instead of more shiny things, what they gave was more time?
More time and repeated exposure to products, features, and processes that work really well. Time with a product that seems to just understand users intuitively and respond the way they expect it to. And sure, in that time, users might miss something here or there, or straight up fail at an attempt. But, because the product was well built, and had earned users’ trust that once they got it, it would get them to where they needed to be, doing the things they needed to do, they’d stick with it.
Through that process of repeated exposure, they’d gain mastery of that product. And that continued sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, would very likely reflect in those pesky NPS, CSAT, and other user satisfaction scores. It would reflect in the confidence with which users speak about the product and recommend it to anyone who would listen. And most of all, it would reflect in that visceral response, those unnameable, yet very real reasons users choose and reject products every single day. Perhaps in today’s “Fast X” world, that is where true innovation lies.
Nicole Wallace
Principal UX Researcher
