Looking for a good analogy! [on hold]
I've recently been finding analogies quite helpful when explaining something to clients. Something I'm explaining on a regular basis is that causing users to stop and pause to think about something can seem quite negligible (sometimes it can just be a half of a second pause), but when confronted with multiple instances of these pauses they can add up and amount to a bad user experience.
Does anyone have a good analogy for this? Any ideas welcome!
website-design design users experience
asked Dec 28 '18 at 14:46
scottriddoch
162
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put on hold as primarily opinion-based by JonW♦ Dec 29 '18 at 8:41
Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise. If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.
add a comment |
I've recently been finding analogies quite helpful when explaining something to clients. Something I'm explaining on a regular basis is that causing users to stop and pause to think about something can seem quite negligible (sometimes it can just be a half of a second pause), but when confronted with multiple instances of these pauses they can add up and amount to a bad user experience.
Does anyone have a good analogy for this? Any ideas welcome!
website-design design users experience
asked Dec 28 '18 at 14:46
scottriddoch
162
New contributor
scottriddoch is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
put on hold as primarily opinion-based by JonW♦ Dec 29 '18 at 8:41
Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise. If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.
2
Steve Krug wrote an entire book on the subject, Don’t Make Me Think. You may find some good analogies therein (or just give a copy to your clients). In her book, Badass: Making Users Awesome, Kathy Sierra calls these small distractions “cognitive leaks.”
– Patrick McElhaney
Dec 29 '18 at 14:26
add a comment |
I've recently been finding analogies quite helpful when explaining something to clients. Something I'm explaining on a regular basis is that causing users to stop and pause to think about something can seem quite negligible (sometimes it can just be a half of a second pause), but when confronted with multiple instances of these pauses they can add up and amount to a bad user experience.
Does anyone have a good analogy for this? Any ideas welcome!
website-design design users experience
asked Dec 28 '18 at 14:46
scottriddoch
162
New contributor
scottriddoch is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
I've recently been finding analogies quite helpful when explaining something to clients. Something I'm explaining on a regular basis is that causing users to stop and pause to think about something can seem quite negligible (sometimes it can just be a half of a second pause), but when confronted with multiple instances of these pauses they can add up and amount to a bad user experience.
Does anyone have a good analogy for this? Any ideas welcome!
website-design design users experience
website-design design users experience
asked Dec 28 '18 at 14:46
scottriddoch
162
New contributor
scottriddoch is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
asked Dec 28 '18 at 14:46
scottriddoch
162
New contributor
scottriddoch is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
asked Dec 28 '18 at 14:46
scottriddoch
162
New contributor
scottriddoch is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
asked Dec 28 '18 at 14:46
scottriddoch
162
asked Dec 28 '18 at 14:46
scottriddoch
162
162
New contributor
scottriddoch is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
New contributor
scottriddoch is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
scottriddoch is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
put on hold as primarily opinion-based by JonW♦ Dec 29 '18 at 8:41
Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise. If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.
put on hold as primarily opinion-based by JonW♦ Dec 29 '18 at 8:41
Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise. If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.
2
Steve Krug wrote an entire book on the subject, Don’t Make Me Think. You may find some good analogies therein (or just give a copy to your clients). In her book, Badass: Making Users Awesome, Kathy Sierra calls these small distractions “cognitive leaks.”
– Patrick McElhaney
Dec 29 '18 at 14:26
add a comment |
2
Steve Krug wrote an entire book on the subject, Don’t Make Me Think. You may find some good analogies therein (or just give a copy to your clients). In her book, Badass: Making Users Awesome, Kathy Sierra calls these small distractions “cognitive leaks.”
– Patrick McElhaney
Dec 29 '18 at 14:26
2
2
Steve Krug wrote an entire book on the subject, Don’t Make Me Think. You may find some good analogies therein (or just give a copy to your clients). In her book, Badass: Making Users Awesome, Kathy Sierra calls these small distractions “cognitive leaks.”
– Patrick McElhaney
Dec 29 '18 at 14:26
Steve Krug wrote an entire book on the subject, Don’t Make Me Think. You may find some good analogies therein (or just give a copy to your clients). In her book, Badass: Making Users Awesome, Kathy Sierra calls these small distractions “cognitive leaks.”
– Patrick McElhaney
Dec 29 '18 at 14:26
add a comment |
4 Answers
4
active
oldest
votes
Death by meeting ☠️
The best analogy I've come up with for office-dwellers is meetings. Both the scheduled and unscheduled variety apply, but the latter is the best parallel.
There's nothing more disruptive to productive workers than the constant task-switching of a meeting-culture office. Listen to a sad little story with me …
You have some big stuff on your list today
You put on your headphones and settle in
You pick the next problem or task from your list
You're really going to accomplish something today!
💥
A meeting reminder pops up on your screen
All that hard work is flushed 🚽
Shuffle off to the conference room on floor 5
Spend the next hour wrapping your head around a totally new issue
One of the attendees pulls you aside to talk about follow-up
You talk for another 10 or 15 minutes
You roll back to your desk over an hour later
Just the thought of getting your head back in the zone exhausts you
15 minutes later you're back in your groove 🛫
An exec drops by to chat about something that's been on his mind 🛬
😞
Interrupting your user's workflow is a lot like that in a little microcosm.
answered Dec 28 '18 at 18:51
plainclothes
19.6k43777
add a comment |
A good analogy for this can be found in this article from nngroup:
Most computer users have learned that running too many programs at
the same time can slow down or even crash the machine. We work around
these limitations by closing programs when we aren't using them.
Just like computers, human brains have a limited amount of processing
power.
Causing users to pause several times to think about what they are doing, add to their cognitive load, decreasing their performance.
answered Dec 28 '18 at 18:06
Aline
579312
1
This is a great one!
– Nicolas Hung
Dec 28 '18 at 18:10
1
Depending on the technical knowledge of the audience, you might also throw in some facts about how context switching between threads is expensive because the system has to reload the state from before the last switch. Humans have to do this, too.
– jpmc26
Dec 28 '18 at 23:03
add a comment |
I have a demotivational poster behind my desk that sums this up quite nicely.
Irresponsibility-
No single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood.
It's in the owner's best interest to remove all distractions from the goal of the site/app/program. They add up quickly to become a major problem for the user.
answered Dec 28 '18 at 20:41
Starshine
311
New contributor
Starshine is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
add a comment |
In a supermarket, customers might forgive having to wait in the checkout line once .. twice ..
but if it happens to often, they won't come back.
How's that? :)
answered Dec 28 '18 at 20:28
Fattie
808517
1
I think a better shopping analogy is if the store were to randomly introduce unrelated things in an otherwise logical aisle. If the shopper was looking for their favorite cereal and was suddenly confronted with toilet paper in the middle of the cereal section, you could really screw with their head.
– plainclothes
Dec 29 '18 at 0:34
add a comment |
4 Answers
4
active
oldest
votes
4 Answers
4
active
oldest
votes
active
oldest
votes
active
oldest
votes
Death by meeting ☠️
The best analogy I've come up with for office-dwellers is meetings. Both the scheduled and unscheduled variety apply, but the latter is the best parallel.
There's nothing more disruptive to productive workers than the constant task-switching of a meeting-culture office. Listen to a sad little story with me …
You have some big stuff on your list today
You put on your headphones and settle in
You pick the next problem or task from your list
You're really going to accomplish something today!
💥
A meeting reminder pops up on your screen
All that hard work is flushed 🚽
Shuffle off to the conference room on floor 5
Spend the next hour wrapping your head around a totally new issue
One of the attendees pulls you aside to talk about follow-up
You talk for another 10 or 15 minutes
You roll back to your desk over an hour later
Just the thought of getting your head back in the zone exhausts you
15 minutes later you're back in your groove 🛫
An exec drops by to chat about something that's been on his mind 🛬
😞
Interrupting your user's workflow is a lot like that in a little microcosm.
answered Dec 28 '18 at 18:51
plainclothes
19.6k43777
add a comment |
Death by meeting ☠️
The best analogy I've come up with for office-dwellers is meetings. Both the scheduled and unscheduled variety apply, but the latter is the best parallel.
There's nothing more disruptive to productive workers than the constant task-switching of a meeting-culture office. Listen to a sad little story with me …
You have some big stuff on your list today
You put on your headphones and settle in
You pick the next problem or task from your list
You're really going to accomplish something today!
💥
A meeting reminder pops up on your screen
All that hard work is flushed 🚽
Shuffle off to the conference room on floor 5
Spend the next hour wrapping your head around a totally new issue
One of the attendees pulls you aside to talk about follow-up
You talk for another 10 or 15 minutes
You roll back to your desk over an hour later
Just the thought of getting your head back in the zone exhausts you
15 minutes later you're back in your groove 🛫
An exec drops by to chat about something that's been on his mind 🛬
😞
Interrupting your user's workflow is a lot like that in a little microcosm.
answered Dec 28 '18 at 18:51
plainclothes
19.6k43777
add a comment |
Death by meeting ☠️
The best analogy I've come up with for office-dwellers is meetings. Both the scheduled and unscheduled variety apply, but the latter is the best parallel.
There's nothing more disruptive to productive workers than the constant task-switching of a meeting-culture office. Listen to a sad little story with me …
You have some big stuff on your list today
You put on your headphones and settle in
You pick the next problem or task from your list
You're really going to accomplish something today!
💥
A meeting reminder pops up on your screen
All that hard work is flushed 🚽
Shuffle off to the conference room on floor 5
Spend the next hour wrapping your head around a totally new issue
One of the attendees pulls you aside to talk about follow-up
You talk for another 10 or 15 minutes
You roll back to your desk over an hour later
Just the thought of getting your head back in the zone exhausts you
15 minutes later you're back in your groove 🛫
An exec drops by to chat about something that's been on his mind 🛬
😞
Interrupting your user's workflow is a lot like that in a little microcosm.
answered Dec 28 '18 at 18:51
plainclothes
19.6k43777
Death by meeting ☠️
The best analogy I've come up with for office-dwellers is meetings. Both the scheduled and unscheduled variety apply, but the latter is the best parallel.
There's nothing more disruptive to productive workers than the constant task-switching of a meeting-culture office. Listen to a sad little story with me …
You have some big stuff on your list today
You put on your headphones and settle in
You pick the next problem or task from your list
You're really going to accomplish something today!
💥
A meeting reminder pops up on your screen
All that hard work is flushed 🚽
Shuffle off to the conference room on floor 5
Spend the next hour wrapping your head around a totally new issue
One of the attendees pulls you aside to talk about follow-up
You talk for another 10 or 15 minutes
You roll back to your desk over an hour later
Just the thought of getting your head back in the zone exhausts you
15 minutes later you're back in your groove 🛫
An exec drops by to chat about something that's been on his mind 🛬
😞
Interrupting your user's workflow is a lot like that in a little microcosm.
answered Dec 28 '18 at 18:51
plainclothes
19.6k43777
answered Dec 28 '18 at 18:51
plainclothes
19.6k43777
answered Dec 28 '18 at 18:51
plainclothes
19.6k43777
answered Dec 28 '18 at 18:51
plainclothes
19.6k43777
19.6k43777
add a comment |
add a comment |
A good analogy for this can be found in this article from nngroup:
Most computer users have learned that running too many programs at
the same time can slow down or even crash the machine. We work around
these limitations by closing programs when we aren't using them.
Just like computers, human brains have a limited amount of processing
power.
Causing users to pause several times to think about what they are doing, add to their cognitive load, decreasing their performance.
answered Dec 28 '18 at 18:06
Aline
579312
1
This is a great one!
– Nicolas Hung
Dec 28 '18 at 18:10
1
Depending on the technical knowledge of the audience, you might also throw in some facts about how context switching between threads is expensive because the system has to reload the state from before the last switch. Humans have to do this, too.
– jpmc26
Dec 28 '18 at 23:03
add a comment |
A good analogy for this can be found in this article from nngroup:
Most computer users have learned that running too many programs at
the same time can slow down or even crash the machine. We work around
these limitations by closing programs when we aren't using them.
Just like computers, human brains have a limited amount of processing
power.
Causing users to pause several times to think about what they are doing, add to their cognitive load, decreasing their performance.
answered Dec 28 '18 at 18:06
Aline
579312
1
This is a great one!
– Nicolas Hung
Dec 28 '18 at 18:10
1
Depending on the technical knowledge of the audience, you might also throw in some facts about how context switching between threads is expensive because the system has to reload the state from before the last switch. Humans have to do this, too.
– jpmc26
Dec 28 '18 at 23:03
add a comment |
A good analogy for this can be found in this article from nngroup:
Most computer users have learned that running too many programs at
the same time can slow down or even crash the machine. We work around
these limitations by closing programs when we aren't using them.
Just like computers, human brains have a limited amount of processing
power.
Causing users to pause several times to think about what they are doing, add to their cognitive load, decreasing their performance.
answered Dec 28 '18 at 18:06
Aline
579312
A good analogy for this can be found in this article from nngroup:
Most computer users have learned that running too many programs at
the same time can slow down or even crash the machine. We work around
these limitations by closing programs when we aren't using them.
Just like computers, human brains have a limited amount of processing
power.
Causing users to pause several times to think about what they are doing, add to their cognitive load, decreasing their performance.
answered Dec 28 '18 at 18:06
Aline
579312
edited Dec 28 '18 at 20:00
answered Dec 28 '18 at 18:06
Aline
579312
answered Dec 28 '18 at 18:06
Aline
579312
answered Dec 28 '18 at 18:06
Aline
579312
579312
1
This is a great one!
– Nicolas Hung
Dec 28 '18 at 18:10
1
Depending on the technical knowledge of the audience, you might also throw in some facts about how context switching between threads is expensive because the system has to reload the state from before the last switch. Humans have to do this, too.
– jpmc26
Dec 28 '18 at 23:03
add a comment |
1
This is a great one!
– Nicolas Hung
Dec 28 '18 at 18:10
1
Depending on the technical knowledge of the audience, you might also throw in some facts about how context switching between threads is expensive because the system has to reload the state from before the last switch. Humans have to do this, too.
– jpmc26
Dec 28 '18 at 23:03
1
1
This is a great one!
– Nicolas Hung
Dec 28 '18 at 18:10
This is a great one!
– Nicolas Hung
Dec 28 '18 at 18:10
1
1
Depending on the technical knowledge of the audience, you might also throw in some facts about how context switching between threads is expensive because the system has to reload the state from before the last switch. Humans have to do this, too.
– jpmc26
Dec 28 '18 at 23:03
Depending on the technical knowledge of the audience, you might also throw in some facts about how context switching between threads is expensive because the system has to reload the state from before the last switch. Humans have to do this, too.
– jpmc26
Dec 28 '18 at 23:03
add a comment |
I have a demotivational poster behind my desk that sums this up quite nicely.
Irresponsibility-
No single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood.
It's in the owner's best interest to remove all distractions from the goal of the site/app/program. They add up quickly to become a major problem for the user.
answered Dec 28 '18 at 20:41
Starshine
311
New contributor
Starshine is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
add a comment |
I have a demotivational poster behind my desk that sums this up quite nicely.
Irresponsibility-
No single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood.
It's in the owner's best interest to remove all distractions from the goal of the site/app/program. They add up quickly to become a major problem for the user.
answered Dec 28 '18 at 20:41
Starshine
311
New contributor
Starshine is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
add a comment |
I have a demotivational poster behind my desk that sums this up quite nicely.
Irresponsibility-
No single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood.
It's in the owner's best interest to remove all distractions from the goal of the site/app/program. They add up quickly to become a major problem for the user.
answered Dec 28 '18 at 20:41
Starshine
311
New contributor
Starshine is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
I have a demotivational poster behind my desk that sums this up quite nicely.
Irresponsibility-
No single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood.
It's in the owner's best interest to remove all distractions from the goal of the site/app/program. They add up quickly to become a major problem for the user.
answered Dec 28 '18 at 20:41
Starshine
311
New contributor
Starshine is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
answered Dec 28 '18 at 20:41
Starshine
311
New contributor
Starshine is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
answered Dec 28 '18 at 20:41
Starshine
311
answered Dec 28 '18 at 20:41
Starshine
311
311
New contributor
Starshine is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
New contributor
Starshine is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
Starshine is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
Check out our Code of Conduct.
add a comment |
add a comment |
In a supermarket, customers might forgive having to wait in the checkout line once .. twice ..
but if it happens to often, they won't come back.
How's that? :)
answered Dec 28 '18 at 20:28
Fattie
808517
1
I think a better shopping analogy is if the store were to randomly introduce unrelated things in an otherwise logical aisle. If the shopper was looking for their favorite cereal and was suddenly confronted with toilet paper in the middle of the cereal section, you could really screw with their head.
– plainclothes
Dec 29 '18 at 0:34
add a comment |
In a supermarket, customers might forgive having to wait in the checkout line once .. twice ..
but if it happens to often, they won't come back.
How's that? :)
answered Dec 28 '18 at 20:28
Fattie
808517
1
I think a better shopping analogy is if the store were to randomly introduce unrelated things in an otherwise logical aisle. If the shopper was looking for their favorite cereal and was suddenly confronted with toilet paper in the middle of the cereal section, you could really screw with their head.
– plainclothes
Dec 29 '18 at 0:34
add a comment |
In a supermarket, customers might forgive having to wait in the checkout line once .. twice ..
but if it happens to often, they won't come back.
How's that? :)
answered Dec 28 '18 at 20:28
Fattie
808517
In a supermarket, customers might forgive having to wait in the checkout line once .. twice ..
but if it happens to often, they won't come back.
How's that? :)
answered Dec 28 '18 at 20:28
Fattie
808517
answered Dec 28 '18 at 20:28
Fattie
808517
answered Dec 28 '18 at 20:28
Fattie
808517
answered Dec 28 '18 at 20:28
Fattie
808517
808517
1
I think a better shopping analogy is if the store were to randomly introduce unrelated things in an otherwise logical aisle. If the shopper was looking for their favorite cereal and was suddenly confronted with toilet paper in the middle of the cereal section, you could really screw with their head.
– plainclothes
Dec 29 '18 at 0:34
add a comment |
1
I think a better shopping analogy is if the store were to randomly introduce unrelated things in an otherwise logical aisle. If the shopper was looking for their favorite cereal and was suddenly confronted with toilet paper in the middle of the cereal section, you could really screw with their head.
– plainclothes
Dec 29 '18 at 0:34
1
1
I think a better shopping analogy is if the store were to randomly introduce unrelated things in an otherwise logical aisle. If the shopper was looking for their favorite cereal and was suddenly confronted with toilet paper in the middle of the cereal section, you could really screw with their head.
– plainclothes
Dec 29 '18 at 0:34
I think a better shopping analogy is if the store were to randomly introduce unrelated things in an otherwise logical aisle. If the shopper was looking for their favorite cereal and was suddenly confronted with toilet paper in the middle of the cereal section, you could really screw with their head.
– plainclothes
Dec 29 '18 at 0:34
add a comment |
2
Steve Krug wrote an entire book on the subject, Don’t Make Me Think. You may find some good analogies therein (or just give a copy to your clients). In her book, Badass: Making Users Awesome, Kathy Sierra calls these small distractions “cognitive leaks.”
– Patrick McElhaney
Dec 29 '18 at 14:26