The #UX Secret That Will Ruin #Apps For You | Co.Design | business + design
▻http://www.fastcodesign.com/3061519/evidence/the-ux-secret-that-will-ruin-apps-for-you
Steven Hoober, president at the consultancy 4ourth Mobile, was developing a service plan optimizer for a cell-phone carrier—a system that looked at a customer’s cell-phone usage and suggested the most bang-for-your-buck plan. “My guys built this tool—it took single digit milliseconds to get the results back. And it was giving [accurate] results, not just some plan we wanted to sell them,” Hoober says. “But when we tested with people, they assumed it was all marketing bullshit because it was instantaneous. They’d say, ‘This was obviously a canned result, I’m just gonna shop myself.’”
So Hoober introduced a waiting randomizer. The same code pulled the same results, but a timer delayed the display of those results anywhere from 8 to 30 seconds. The only visual feedback was a spinning indicator. Were focus group testers annoyed? Did they label the machine incompetent? Just the opposite. “People would sit there, asking, ’I wonder what it’s doing?’” Hoober says. “Results would show up, and they’d lean in to the computer [assuming] it must have been really hard to get that information!” One hundred percent of people tested trusted the new tool, even though the only thing that changed significantly was their wait.
