When people hear about technology that shaves 1, 2, maybe 3 seconds off of some common task, or removes just 1 or 2 user interactions with something, they frequently say, “Why should that matter? What does that have to do with anything? Why does anybody care?”
Some even get defensive:
There’s something about reaching a magical threshold, that suddenly means people use technology differently.
This is not just the case for technology, but for economics as well. When something reaches a magical price-point, suddenly there is a rush of traffic to buy that item.
change changes effect effects small tiny great large big tippingpoint priority priorities
In economics, there’s the concept of the “criticial price point” or something like that. After the magic price point is reached, the gates flood open.
Why does this happen?
A lot of things, where SmallChangesYieldGreatChanges, happen because a process breaches the priorities queue.
So it’s like a binary switch.
Now, that comment may have resulted in a dramatic change in the group’s decisions. Many comments, from lots of people, may have resulted in still greater effect.
Cost can be:
A TechnologySolution such as InkscapeToOddmuse or the ZergHive? can help alleviate the LongImageIncorporationProcess, and other ContentRouting problems. The result can be radically different behavior on the wiki, or wherever. In our case, it was far greater use of VisualLanguage. Before, we still wanted to add pictures, but it just took way too long to go through the hassle of constructing SVG and PNG images, to really be perceived to be worth the bother.
There was an interesting study (link?) that showed that usability ratings would go way up, when computers simply performed faster, rather than slower.
Some features that are never used, because they are too slow, suddenly become star features, once they pass a particular responsiveness threshold.
As many of you know, I run into this a lot.
I frequently run into examples of this, but have difficulty recalling them.
I’m immediately thinking:
I frequently run into explaining why this matters when explaining:
Most of my examples are on a much longer timescale. If something takes more than 10 years to do, most people aren’t going to even bother starting. Examples:
Perhaps closer to what you’re looking for:
I have a few examples at the millisecond timescale:
I’ve also heard of the “magic $499 threshold” – keeping something cheap enough that people who have a $500-per-transaction limit on their credit card can put it on credit.
Other than time and money, what other thresholds are there ?
“I’m still at the very beginning of the weblog process, and so am still adapting to the idea of “make all your thoughts public.” I don’t really know how to do it yet.” … “even little hurdles can make something just a little too hard to do” – Bruce Eckel http://mindview.net/WebLog/log-0001 http://mindview.net/WebLog/log-0044
I think this page should not be moved to TippingPoint?. This is only one particular kind of TippingPoint?.
Some interesting “facts” from the world of usability experts:
Thank you, Radomir. Especially for pointing out the 2 kinds of feedback – the immediate “yes, I’m responding to you”, and the possibly much later actual results. Many kinds of asynchronous communication completely skip that first kind of feedback. Is it a good idea to try to manually add it back in? For example, is it a good idea to immediately respond to email with something like “Just got your email; I’ll be pondering this and should get a real response by next Thursday”?
Another example of SmallChangesYieldGreatChanges:
"In brief praise of DVCSs" by Aristotle Pagaltzis says: “It seems like small potatoes, but when someone turns something that takes five actions and has a free variable into a single action that requires no thinking whatsoever, it changes the quality of the game. You start creating throw-away repositories for the littlest reason because the only decision left to make is whether to create one or not. It’s a classic example of the tyranny of choice.”
(tangent) So what is this “TyrannyOfChoice”? Is it related to ThePowerOfQuestions? (/tangent)
I see that "User Interface Design For Programmers" by Joel Spolsky 2001 discusses how tiny frustrations that “seem too petty to dwell on” have a large effect. There’s a little bit about LearnedHelplessness?. A little bit about how adding completely non-functional chunks of rubber to a camera can subtly guide a person into holding it properly.
There is a (French, I think) saying stating that “good first impression consists of around 700 irrelevant details”. I would say that it’s the same with good usability, and a lot of other areas where you depend on first impressions. It gets critical when you want the users to get into the “flow” – because the tinniest distraction can spoil it.
As for the “I’m working on it” messages, they are a good idea, as long as you do them manually. Automating them removes all credibility, and as soon as the receiver notices they are in fact automatic response, they just become an annoyance. False feedback is worse than no feedback.