UX, Human Care and Empathy During Times of Stress

I remember watching “The Social Dilemma” and really feeling the weight of responsibility that the UX industry carries in how we craft and shape experiences that emotionally connect with humanity at such a deep level… an important level. A few things stuck with me. First, a reminder that most UX professionals spend some time in classrooms learning about the psychology of human behavior and that with this knowledge comes great responsibility. Next, there was a quote that stuck with me. The words shared by Edward Tufte who said, “There are only two industries that call their customers ‘users’: illegal drugs and software.” (ugh — no!)

Like many UX professionals, I have read countless books and articles on human behavior and the psychology behind design. As an industry we pride ourselves in human empathy. Our entire field is centered on humans with all their messy emotions and complexity.

It feels apropos that I am writing this as I kickoff spring break with a stress fracture. As I reflect on the topic of “Human Care and Stress Response”, my body is literally responding to the stress of over-running (there is a great analogy here somewhere).

I got my MRI a few days ago and called my doctor as instructed to let him know it was done. The receptionist told me that I’d have to drive in to hear the results. “But, I was told to minimize my driving and to just call,” I said. “These are the rules,” she replied. “Can you please check with the Doctor. I just need to find out how serious the injury is, I think he can just talk to me after reading the MRI,” I pleaded. She said, “We don’t do that over the phone anymore.”

I quickly went from “calm acceptance of an injury” to “high stress.” My mind is racing with images of crutching through parking lots and doorway gymnastics as I try to push open heavy doors on crutches. And why? All of this, just to sit there and be told words that could be said over the phone. This felt like such a missed moment where we lean into digital and human interaction.

This is User Experience during a time of stress. This is that moment, where we show up as UX heroes in human care and think of the ways that we serve. In social media this means finding the ways to diffuse stress. In healthcare this means creating comfort and ease. In the financial industry this means providing calmness and confidence.

It’s Empathy, and it’s the first step in design thinking. Humans are so good at it. When I started out in design, we were at this tipping point where websites were becoming more than “marketing vehicles” and actual transactional experiences that allowed you to do business. In this very moment we delegated so much of our human empathy and compassion to 1’s and 0’s. We handed over the “user experience” to bright HTML pages. We counted on them. We trusted them to take care of our humans. We learned fast that transferring our human empathy to the interfaces would require both art and science.

I often told people that I had the best job in the insurance industry (I think I did). People go to their insurance site for a lot of reasons: to save money on something that the law requires them to buy; but also, because they want to be prepared for a bad scenario or because something terrible already happened. They may have lost a home, a car or worst of all, a loved one.

Like many of us I wanted my career to be purpose driven and really go to places that help people. How could I do more? How could I be better?

It was in these early days of my career where I really started to think about “Human Care” and the stress response that designers must account for when we meet our “users.” I remember someone suggesting that our claims experience could include a “draw your accident” page where you would literally recreate the scene of the accident by drawing it with a “drag and drop” interface. Can you imagine? Having to map out every impact: where people were… having to relive that so visually. Would it even change anything? No, it wouldn’t do anything that verbal testimony could not do. We did not launch that feature.

And stress isn’t always traumatic accidents. I recall sitting with a client in her home with the intention to observe her using our iPad app. My research goals were thrown out the window as the lovely woman handed her iPad over to a high energy toddler so that she could be entertained long enough for me to observe her purchase an insurance policy (Now being done on desktop, unfortunately). I noted this moment in my report as that moment when the woman had to give up her iPad, move to the desktop and try to get this done in the few precious moments that her child was entertained. I noted that she had to start over in the desktop and that it would be great if there was a way to design the “hand off” so that she could pick up where she left off on tablet. It became my responsibility to design an experience that would remove that stress.

I am able to remember this vividly over a decade later, because I felt the stress for her. It wasn’t trauma. It was just daily stress. We see it as an “ease” score on a usability report, but the companies who really understand and account for it will win. Like so many other moments in UX and Design being there and seeing it is what drives us — it’s how we know the ways to care!

I mentioned earlier that I had an MRI recently. I knew going into it that I faced a simple injury. But what about people who have big fears? How can we do this better? Look at this image. Rarely is an MRI “stress-free”, but I love that a designer somewhere thought about the ways that we can try to create calm. Here designers leverage Biophilic Design, using nature and its impact on calmness and well-being. Incorporating nature into workplace design and architecture has been popular in Eastern architecture for a long time and now growing more popular in Western architecture.

“The very idea of biophilic design was actually born from the growing awareness that the mind and the human body develop within a “sensorially rich world” that is fundamental to people’s health and intellectual, emotional and spiritual well-being.”(“Applying the benefits of biophilic theory to hospital design”)

I work with an amazing UX team, and they remind me all the time that health and financial wellness are interconnected. It’s so true. If you reflect on that a bit, you will find that in many cases where there is health stress, financial stress is not far. Mental health is so connected to stress, and designers can help ease stress response. After all, we are all in the human care business. And so, my career, like many designers has been built on empathy and a fierce passion to advocate for humans.

The things we interact with are triggering. The very same things that bring us immense joy can bring us immense stress. I feel lucky… I mean really lucky. After 20+ years in the UX industry, I work at a truly human centered company. We are owned by our clients and all our decisions are made centered on one thing… client outcomes! It’s our Mission. We all know that a corporate mission is nonsense if it doesn’t alter behavior, but where I work, all our behaviors and decisions are based on this mission. I work for Vanguard!

Others have tried. They try with great intentions, but at the end of the day an insurance company needs to underwrite a policy to achieve a profit. A retailer must earn revenue. It’s business. It’s a rare opportunity to work for a company that was designed and built for client outcomes.

Afterall; as mentioned earlier, every one of us at some point sat in classroom or read a book where we learned the power that we have…to apply psychology to human-computer interaction to create an outcome. We create the experience. The experience motivates a behavior. The behavior drives an outcome. It is not just what technology does, but it is what our designs and UI carry out — because that is the whole point of human and computer interaction. We need to make sure that those CTAs, copy, and forms increase desirable behaviors.

Understanding this is critical, because while we are in the human care business, this design psychology can lead to a slippery slope. It is paramount for us to create the right level of transparency, education, and intervention to help people and guide them. We often create “Human Connection” when a human is needed the most and that is a lot to consider in every field. In the investment industry providing clients with complete flexibility without the right level of education and intervention can heighten stress to the detriment of life-long goals and even mental wellness.

I’ve read terrifying articles about what happens when the right educational moment or right human intervention is not present in an investment decision. I don’t believe any designer is sitting in a room trying to harm someone in service of revenue, but we must understand how our work impacts anxiety and emotion. We must observe, learn, and build responsibly. We design for people in times of stress. We design for people in times of joy. We have a major responsibility to take it seriously.

Have you ever designed something like this? We can and often do intentionally generate stress.

Intentionally designed to create a stress response. If a human used this language when talking, you’d likely describe them as “Pushy” or “Stressful.”

We have learned that scarcity is a powerful bias that makes us place a higher value on things that are scarce than those in abundance, because we begin to believe it will be harder to obtain (e.g.- toilet paper 2020). I spent a few years in retail, and we were good at using data to trigger an emotion, a behavior, and a desired outcome. UX and psychology go hand in hand, and we can generate stress to provoke an action.

We create patterns for congratulations. The first time I saw the “confetti pattern” was with a retailer who used this as a great way to celebrate an online purchase and encourage the customer to add more to the box to save on shipping. It’s great when it motivates an action that truly does yield a benefit worth celebrating (i.e.- less money in shipping costs). However, if not used responsibly it can encourage the wrong behavior. In the finance industry, it could make you think that a trade is “congratulatory” when it fact there is not a guarantee of a positive outcome. This pattern can almost imply a promise.

Source: https://uxdesign.cc/when-and-how-to-add-confetti-to-your-product-ui-3c87ea541e8a

Charts that illustrate performance and progress trigger stress responses inducing; but not limited to: anxiety, relief, excitement and motivation. If you work in agile software development and you look at burn-down charts, I’m sure you can relate to the emotional reaction you have when you see the line chart going up or down. The finance industry is full of endless charts and graphs and depending on what you do in finance you might have multiple screens of charts running at any time. For your everyday consumer, looking at your financial performance over time is certainly something that triggers a response and so we are obligated to proceed with caution. Some regulation would even prevent you from using a spark line to animate performance up or down (up means promissory).

The charts below show how the same returns visualized differently impact your response. When focused on a short-term timeframe one might panic seeing the red trajectory of these returns, but in the broader long-term timeframe (while the recent dip is bad) you are still doing well and shouldn’t make any brash decisions

Before and After Design Approach for Vanguard Performance Data Visualization. Viewing your performance over the long term, provides a more steady view of progress.

So, what can we do? How can we use our power for good in order to reduce stress, create calm and inspire really positive outcomes? Start with human observation.

• Learn by knowing your clients and customers — by looking them in the eyes and talking to them.
• Translate what comes from human connection into your interface with encouragement, clear direction, and focus.
• Remove distractions and units of information that don’t aid them in building their confidence.
• Give them appropriate friction to head off and prevent negative outcomes.
• Make errors and warning states really obvious.
• Look for opportunities to personalize the interface to align the client to your mission and values.
• Remember that humans are in motion and help them switch context with “ease.”
• Consider all that you’ve learned in the psychology of design and consider selective attention when communicating change (expect change to be hard to detect).

Don’t tell them, show them. Be there and care. Care because you know them. Know your humans.