Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
gins with the knowledge that the TV has the potential to perform far better. He takes action,
only to be presented with enough choices to make his head spin. When he decides on one,
it immediately gives birth to far more detailed options. Daunted, he clicks to accept what's
already there. At that moment, he thinks:
I'll go back and do this later.
The following even-
ing, he again stares at the screen with menus piled on menus.
Maybe I'll check it out this
weekend,
he thinks
.
This time, when he moves from the menu to the pale screen, his first
thought is:
This isn't so bad. Better than the old TV, right?
The weekend comes and goes;
he does nothing.
It doesn't occur to him to revisit the problem until a year later when his new girlfriend
asks about it. Though his subconscious still carries the memory of that bright, vivid screen
at the store, the recollection causes only a mild twinge of discomfort. When he goes in
the kitchen to make a sandwich, his girlfriend tries the picture menu. She can't get past all
those damn options. Giving up before he gets back, she joins him in silent acquiescence to
the dull screen. The next Christmas, she buys him a TV similar to the pale-picture model in
every way—except that its simplified controls give it a clear, bright picture in just a couple
of easily identified motions. As the guy puts down his new remote, he looks up at his girl-
friend lovingly, thinking:
This one's a keeper.
When people's high expectations are met with a lower, yet acceptable reality, that's cog-
nitive dissonance. Our instinctive response is to reduce the dissonance as quickly and com-
pletely as possible. We do this by reducing our expectations. We wanted a state-of-the-art
TV. We settle for a TV with a picture that's slightly better than our old one. Soon we're
saying to our friends: “Big improvement, isn't it?” When we do that we're practicing what
Festinger called: “dissonance reduction.”
The good designer reduces this dissonance in a better way: by creating simplified
user
interfaces
. These UIs are said to be
frictionless
. “Frictionless design… is about dealing
with and removing barriers and constraints,” says Bernard Yu, founder of Enguin Design.
“It's about minimizing cognitive dissonance in the user experience.” A novice designer
might jump to the conclusion that this is all about simplicity. It's not. Simplicity has its
place in digital design, but we work in a complex field, which sometimes requires complic-
ated processes.
“While akin to simplicity, [frictionless] is different,” writes Peter Merholz, formerly of
strategy and design firm Adaptive Path on the company's website. “Kindle is a surprisingly
frictionless device… the Kindle experience, however, is not simple—there are hundreds of
thousands of topics to choose from, there is serious power in the reading experience.”
