Okay. Last question. Am I treating my users like a [REMOVED]? 1
This sounds really strange and I'll explain what I mean by this. 2
So on the left here you'll see the Amazon app for Android. 3
And what happens is that when you select an item and you click on Add to carts, you'll see this pop 4
up and it'll tell you that item was added to cart. 5
"Yeah, I know because I just pressed on that button." And then it asks you if you want to go to cart or if 6
you want to continue shopping. 7
Now this is a pattern that you see actually on a lot of e-commerce apps. 8
And I want to make the case to you that this is not what you want to do because by clicking on the add 9
to cart button I already know that I've added it to cart. 10
You don't have to show me a pop up. And if I wanted to go see the cart I will click on the cart button. 11
But otherwise I would continue shopping. 12
Now the reason why I think its bad is because if I was intent on buying 10 things and every single time 13
I added something to cart I had to be confronted with this pop up asking me "Do I really want to continue 14
shopping" 15
maybe I've indulged in my shopping behavior a little bit too much. 16
So every single time you show this pop up you're asking the users to stop what they're doing and re-evaluate. 17
And similarly this is another example of this in the Jamie Oliver recipe app. And what happens here is 18
that when you are in a particular recipe and you click on Add to a shopping list, it actually send you 19
a pop up saying "Do you want to add the ingredients for Thai-green curry for two people to your shopping 20
list? Add. 21
I mean that's what I wanted to do when I pressed that button. 22
I don't know why I feel like an idiot having to confirm my action given that it wasn't like 23
I just entered the nuclear codes or something. 24
And similarly it does the same thing when you press on the delete all button in your shopping list. 25
This is not my bank details we're talking about. 26
It's so not a big deal 27
and by interrupting my flow instead you prevent the users from having a good user experience. 28
So when you're doing this in your app, this is essentially what you're saying to your users. You are 29
stupid and you should feel bad 30
and nobody wants to feel bad or feel stupid. 31
So don't do this. 32
Now this is a quote from one of my favorite books and it says that a person enters a highly productive 33
mental state by working in harmony with her tools. 34
Interrupting a user's flow for no good reason is stopping the proceedings with idiocy. 35
And this is why this particular design pattern is called the idiot design pattern 36
because you're designing your app for idiots essentially. And this is from a book called about face by 37
Alan Cooper and some other people and it's a really good book on Interaction Design if 38
you're interested. 39
Now how should you implement this? 40
Well this is the Amazon app for iOS and what happens here is that when you click on Add to Cart, you'll 41
see an image of your item fall into your cart and there will be a badge on that cart to show that there's 42
one extra item in there and that it's not empty. 43
So now you're free to choose either to go to cart and check out or you can continue shopping. 44
But nobody forced a pop up on you to confirm that action because you already did so by pressing on the 45
button. 46
So this is a way better way of implementing that same functionality without the idiot pattern. 47
So think about your own designs and think about your own app. 48
Are you treating your users with respect? 49
Are you treating them as the intelligent individuals that they are? 50
So try to take your users actions at face value and try to avoid this 51
if you can.