Feedback in design,What is it about?
Every human being today in some or the other way is interacting with one or more products every day, may it be a microwave oven, computers, mobile phones, an elevator, a gas stove, a website, ATM and the list goes on and on. We interact so much with so many products that without a proper feedback system in place it would be difficult for us to know whether the action we performed has been accepted or not.
What is Feedback?
Feedback is one of the design principles which helps to communicate the result of any interaction performed by the end-user to achieve a certain goal.
Feedback is a very crucial element when it comes to communicating the current state of the system with the user.
For Eg, A Microwave uses the Beeping sound to give feedback to the user that the cooking process has been completed.
A washing machine is another good example that also provides the user with Feedback of the washing cycle (Soak, Wash, Rinse, Spin,) that is going on, on the display of the control panel. It also uses the Sound feedback usually a small music playback or beeping sound to indicate the user the washing has been completed or in case there has been an error
Although the designer mustn’t overcrowd the product with too much feedback in place, this would not only annoy the user but also confuse him. I can relate to it with the above example itself, my old washing machine used to play music every time before the washing cycle has around 15 mins to complete this always made me consider that either the washing cycle has been completed or there has been some error making me to go and have a look at it every time until I got used to it and started ignoring it and probably replaced it.
Feedback in Digital Interfaces
Like with the physical product, Feedback plays a key role in providing the appropriate communication to the user in the digital world too.
Most of us who are reading this article do purchase stuff online may it be on eBay, Amazon, Flip-kart, etc. What if, after hitting the “Pay Now” button on the payment gateway the web page just turns blank showing no information at all whether the payment has been processed and the order has been placed or not.
This would leave the user in a very confused state and would lead to a very bad User experience. That is the reason why most of these websites always keep a proper Feedback mechanism in place like you can see in the image below from eBay, where it notifies the user that the payment is being processed.
With the Increase in the Digital interfaces, Feedback is necessary. The designer puts a lot of effort while designing the appropriate feedback interaction. Like we saw in the above example of eBay.
A designer can use a Message box, simple animated interaction, sound, etc to give the required feedback to the user.
Although the designer mustn’t overcrowd the product with too much feedback in place, this would not only annoy the user but also confuse him.
I once installed an Antivirus Security tool on my computer, all looked good after installing and then after a while, it started to tell me about everything that it was doing with all detailed level technical stuff, which I doubt I wanted to know at all every few minutes.
Sensible Feedback
It is important that when the designer designs Feedback for the user, he puts himself in the shoes of the user and designs it in a way that would make sense for the user and communicate to him the correct information and helps him take the next step.
I would make this point clear by taking the example of Blue Error Screen (“Some say it to be a Blue screen of Death”) I got on my computer just before few hours while writing this article, It communicates to me that there is a malfunction occurred and it would be restarting but then tells me to scan the QR code (“Should I run and get my cell phone”)before the computer restarts or note down the website link shown on the screen.
Isn’t this annoying?
Just think what could be better feedback, in this case, get your creative mind rolling.
