Guy: Nine. Let users undo their mistakes. Welcome to the Service Design Principles on Guy
Martin, joined by the author of the Service Design Principle series of books. Founder of the
Swiss Innovation Academy and Service Design Practitioner The error corrected Daniela.
Caitlin Otto
Daniele: had such a pleasure.
Guy: Hi. So each episode, as you know, we look at one of the principles from your book, Service
Design Principles. One, two, one. And today it's principle number nine. Let users undo their
mistakes. So a lot of the work that we do in in service design and customer experience and
things like these is about reducing friction. But here you're suggesting that sometimes adding
friction could be useful. So when does it make sense to add friction?
Daniele: So a good example is when people are about to delete something which cannot be
retrieved. You know, this is a very good example where we basically tell people, Are you really
sure you want to do this? You know, in a perfect world where we want to smooth every experience,
you know, whenever you would click delete on your computer, it would just take it out, remove
it completely, not even put it in the trash. But no, we add friction because we know that
sometimes we do things a little bit quickly and that's a good moment to do that. Another good
example is I had this one once at LinkedIn. I was I don't know why. In a comment I wrote
something about Showers and LinkedIn before I, I wanted to click to send and then it said,
maybe just have a second thought about your post because we're trying to have conversations about
professional stuff. And it was like, Oh, let me double check the did I write something that is
that that shouldn't be on a professional network? Then it was like, Oh no, it's good. It was just
an image that I was giving with the word shower. But, but they had kind of this mechanism which
maybe showed looked for words like please shower naked, that this kind of stuff. And just not
saying you can't speak about that, but rather Are you sure? Are you sure this is a good moment?
Are you sure this is the right thing to do at that moment?
Guy: Right. But we don't want to be asked all the time. So it's contextual, right? That. That
this. This happens. Because if every decision, every click that we do, we're asked to confirm
that. That it would drive people insane.
Daniele: And even it would drive another thing which you might remember that from Windows Vista
back in the days where it asked so many times your permission, but people got into a mode
whenever there was a window, they just clicked, okay, you know, and then they don't even read it.
So it's as you say, it's a good balance of knowing when is the good moment and having not
too many of those. And that's where the art of the resistance starts. You know, it's like there
is no perfect formula to know how much is enough and you have to kind of be be empathetic of the
situation.
Guy: Right. So one thing I noticed in some email clients is if I use the word attached or
attachment, then and I don't attach something, then it will pop up and say, Oh, did you mean to
attach a file because you've said this right? So it's saying, Here's something which I noticed
about the content of your message that you're saying there's an attachment, but there is no
attachment. So are you sure you want to send this without an attachment? But if I didn't put
those words into the text, then it wouldn't ask me that question.
Daniele: And that's, you know, in a way, it goes even further than than the principle that we
just speaking about, which is let's use and do mistake, which is prevent people from doing the
mistake,
Guy: Right.
Daniele: you know.
Guy: Yeah.
Daniele: Right. And, and I think there are kind of these two levels, you know, there is level
one, which is making sure that people can even do stuff. And this is something that especially
in the digital world, you know, you have services where if you, for example, you read the
message, you can say, Oh, I read it. There are there are services where until I think one year
ago Apple Messages was like that, you know, and I this is was very disturbing because you just
opened the message by by mistake and you were like, okay, now I will I will forget to come
back to it. And so for digital services, this is kind of like the first level is having a way to
bring it back. Even if you delete something, maybe adding a few days of delay before you
delete it completely. You know, Facebook does that with your accounts. When you delete your
account, they're telling you, okay, we're going to delete it in 24 hours or in so many hours.
Until then, you still can change your opinion. And so that's kind of like the first level. And
the second level, which you're talking about is a bit more. So again, now that we've done that,
how can we prevent people from doing that kind of mistake?
Guy: So it's not just undoing it? Yeah. It's the preventative is better than the cure.
Daniele: I think both is kind of like the sweet spot.
Guy: Because I guess, you know, the there's. There's economics and where people are behaving
rationally. And then there's behavioral economics where people are behaving irrationally
and people make mistakes. But I guess sometimes we design for the rational human as opposed to
the real human, which is is sometimes irrational. And some will make mistakes and So providing
that way to to back out of what they've done or, you know, corrects that mistake, I think that
it's the important thing. Y.
Daniele: And if we're speaking of behavioral economics, I think two terms that people will
love to Google are one which is nudge and the other one which is rational, rational override.
And these are basically two terms now just basically saying making things more users. So
that stuff happens and rational override is basically saying putting a stop so that people
can't do something because before that they confirm it. For example, when you delete the
file, you have a rational override which is blocking you from what you were doing and they
pay attention. Attention, You need to do something. And the nudge is, for example, you
know, when I put the cookies not in the kitchen, but I put them in the cellar, but put some
apples on our kitchen table, this is a nudge. It's something where automatically I will go get
the apples. But even without thinking about it.
Guy: Right. Which kind of ties back to making it easy for you to do the right thing.
Daniele: Yeah. And so that's and so that's kind of like the arts, like in the academic stuff. So
if you want to go into, into the more academy stuff, it's like basically we need to know when
is the good time to nudge people towards something and when is a good time to create
rational overrides to block people. And that's where it's like where science meets the art.
Guy: So this particular principle is a little bit about both. And. And that rational override.
It's just the pause. It's allowing the the human brain, the rational brain to take over a little
bit and say, Hang on, monkey. Just wait. Hang on, Mr. Lizard Brain. Just. Just wait a second,
because this could be important. Don't just go by instinct here. That could lead you astray.
Daniele: Yeah. So if we wanted to say it a bit more like academics, it would be use rational
overrides sometimes because, you know, academics always add sometimes maybe...
Guy: "Depends. ". Yeah.
Daniele: it depends on the context
Guy: All right, great. Thank you very much.
Daniele: Thanks to you
Guy: See you on the next one.