Ease and Satisfaction

I have the sense lately that the attempt to make things easier for users is contributing to a lack of satisfaction with the very products that propose to alleviate them of the burden.   In order to make it easy to do something, choices are eliminated – and eliminating choices means eliminating options that, while they require a bit of thought and effort, result in a more satisfactory outcome.

I recall hearing something similar in an argument about storytelling.  

• When someone reads a book that mentions a “pirate,” the simple mention of the word conjures a mental image in the mind of the reader.  
• When the author embellishes the story with a description of the pirate, the details the author provides prevent the reader from forming his own mental image
• When an illustrator is hired to draw a picture of the pirate, the granularity of detail is increased to the point that the reader has very little leeway in deciding for himself what the character looks like.
• When the book is made into a film, the actor who plays the role prevents the reader from imagining even subtle nonverbal details about the character.

And this is the reason that people who see a film based on a book they have read feel a certain sense of dissatisfaction.   “The book was better,” they will say – or more specifically, they will complain that the filmmaker really didn’t understand the character, and transformed the pirate they had conceived from reading the novel into a flimsy stereotype.

This translates itself into consumer experiences of products and services that make things very easy to do, but are not capable of doing quite what the customer really wanted to be done.   From email clients to portfolio management, there are many instances in which a service promises ease of use at the expense of capability and flexibility.

I have to concede, though, that there are a sufficient number of customers who are willing to make that sacrifice.   They will accept a mediocre outcome if the process does not require too much effort – but they are not particularly happy about it, and this latent dissatisfaction translates itself into customer defection when a different solution is offered that may require more thought and effort, but which provide a more satisfactory outcome.

In all, this boils down to the autistic economy: the cost (time and effort) a person is willing to invest in achieving an outcome depends on the degree to which the outcome satisfies the need that motivated them to pursue it.   And in that sense, the trade of effort for results is balanced when little effort achieves marginal results.

And so, the lion’s share of most markets likely does favor ease of use – but there is also an increasing potential in niche marketing to those whose desire for better results causes them to be willing to undertake greater cost to achieve them.