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