Mindful UX protects usersā mental health, privacy, and mental state. Itās inclusive and accessible. It aims to prevent harm and to help recover from it.
Managing the level of interruptions
A product has various ways to communicate information. Visual and auditive senses are the most commonly used. Digital items sometimes use touch, for instance with haptic feedback. Some notifications require your attention immediately, for instance if your cooking timer goes off and you donāt want to burn your shakshuka. Some are neither urgent nor important. Yes, airline company newsletter, Iām looking at you, especially at the moment. Finally, some donāt have any fixed level of urgency or importance: you will adapt them to your contextual needs. My phone is always in silent mode, but Iāll activate the ringtone if Iām expecting an important call.
We can admire Slackās fantastic workflow for notifications. (Source)
In real life, how do you decide on the way youāre communicating news with someone? It can depend on:
- Your interlocutor (professional relation, family, long lost friend)
- The number of interlocutors
- The nature of the news (sensitive or not)
- The urgency
- The importance: paying your taxes might not be urgent if the deadline is 2 months from now, but it is important as you certainly donāt want to miss it
Based on all of that, are you going to call, email, text, video call, send a Twitter DM, leave a post-it note? Are you going to send reminders?
Limiting distractions, protecting your attention
We all know about this, you donāt need me to spell it out: everyone is competing for our attention. You might have already taken measures to limit distractions: your phone might be in silent mode, you might even disable some notifications, block ads, disable autoplay, etc. Android and iOS even carry native features to help us protect our attention.
Apart from the digital measures Iāve just mentioned, thereās another way you can mitigate distractions. If you share your physical workspace with others ā like I am doing in our current lockdown ā you can signal when youāre available to be interrupted and when youāre not. Leave a sign on your door, place an object on your desk, etc.
There are even different levels for that:
- Available
- Only disturb if urgent
- Do not disturb under any circumstances
Paying attention to accessibility
An accessible product is a product thatās usable by everyone. The quintessence of inaccessible design is Terms & Conditions. Never-ending walls of text with little to no page layout, all written in legalese. For those of you who donāt know, ālegaleseā represents legal lingo thatās completely closed off to the uninitiated.
An easy way to be more mindful of accessibility in your daily life is to adapt your communication. If you want to use jargon with people who might not be familiar with it, explain what it means ā just like I did above with ālegaleseā. In a group discussion, give background and context so that everyone has the same level of information and everyone can follow. When writing up a document, highlight the key information to make it easily scannable.
Removing visual clutter
We are well aware that visual overstimulation is detrimental to us. I even asked people on Twitter about it, and the results are telling.
Whether itās in your room or at your desk, trimming down the visual clutter allows, by contrast, to shine more light on whatās important, on the few things that you decide to leave in sight. Not only does that make it easier for you to find something youāre looking for, but itās also nicer and less stressful on the eyes because you have less visual stimuli.
The same applies to your digital places. Leaving white space and room to breathe is beneficial and so much more relaxing. Hereās what my phone and laptop screens look like: much better than having files and apps filling up space.
Avoiding cognitive overload
Cognitive load refers to the mental effort we have to make to use a product, achieve a task, etc. Weāve all known someone who had the bad habit of starting Matryoshka sentences ā or Russian dolls sentences if you prefer. āI had a call with Tamara, because we have a group chat with Marie, and by the way did you know Marie and Tamara had never met? Because last time we met with Awa and had delicious ice cream, I can give you the address, and it was such a sunny dayā and this sentence alone tackled 6 different topics. Yes, some people talk like that, and it exhausts me because I canāt follow.
Some strategies to make it easier:
Chunking
Do you write phone numbers as 0123456789 or 01.23.45.67.89? Splitting your content in smaller chunks makes it easier to both scan and memorise.
Reducing the number of options
You donāt have to go all the way and reduce your wardrobe to 15 items, butā¦ I suppose thatās the spirit? In UX, this is known as Hickās law. Choosing what to have between 10 options will take longer than between 3 options. That wonāt stop me from having 10 different teas at home though. š This isnāt something to apply religiously, just to be aware of and to use whenever relevant.
Recognition rather than recall
Yet another interesting UX principle for your daily life. Recognition leaves cues (e.g. āAre mint & lime in a mojito?ā), whereas recall doesnāt (āWhat are the main ingredients in a mojito?ā). The end goal of these questions is the same, but the former is easier to answer: you just have to recognise whether the information given to you is accurate.
You can then make your environment work for you. I leave my keys in the lock, so that Iām naturally prompted to take them with me as I go out, I donāt need to remember it. If I want to wear something specific the next day, Iāll take it out of the wardrobe and leave it in plain sight. If I need to eat something soon, as it expires the next day, Iāll place it on the kitchen counter.
Choosing between streaks or flexible goals
Several products use streaks to entice you into practising something daily. Headspace does it for meditation, GitHub does it with your code commits. Streaks can be useful, but they shouldnāt be a default goal for any habit you want to learn. Aiming to be flexible, and to complete a task 3 or 5 times per week, is much more realistic than sticking to it everyday, especially if youāre just getting started. Streaks create pressure to perform everyday, while more manageable goals leave room for contingencies.
Additionally, since youāre more likely to complete flexible goals, you can observe your own progress, which encourages you to keep going. Finally, itās important to differentiate whether your completion of a task comes from pressure or from desire. Daily streaks are more likely to be completed from internal coercion, and malleable goals from desire, because if you donāt feel like doing it on Monday, itās no big deal. Listen to yourself, listen to what you feel like doing in the moment, and adapt.
This story was originally published here.