Do you want your solutions be fast adapted? You should use power of laziness in UX of your products or services.
Let’s accept, the word of “Laziness” doesn’t sound well in our business part of brains. Have you ever seen “lazy” in someone’s resumes as a strong part? We take tests and SWOT analysis. Would we be proud of that word? Have you heard such conversation “Oh, do you know that HE IS LAZY” “OMG I CAN’T BELIEVE, I WANT TO BE LIKE HIM” Nahh, i don’t think so. Laziness is a word who stuffed with other ‘someonesaidsoitshouldbebad’ words category and long banned from our corporate language.
But let’s stop and think for a minute. Is this treatment fair to laziness?
… …. (indicative points for “waiting for you to think for a minute)
Did you think? Ok since I can’t look into your eyes and wait there for a minute, I can’t understand if you stopped and think or not, so I will assume you did. So here is my thoughts.
We work so hard to be lazy
The treatment of this word of “laziness” is not fair. Because ironically we own most of our advancements to laziness. We work so hard to be lazy. We keep working for nights, for months, for years to achieve to a word called “Comfort” which serves as just a humble praising servant of “Laziness”. Look at the comforting around. Start from Buttons, automatic doors, pizza and fast food houses, one-click ordering, Remote controls, Mobile phones, wireless home networks, Automatic shift gear, home deliveries, one-button calls, automated garden plumbing, satellites, heart buttons to kickstarter projects, washing machines, dishwashers etc etc, unbelievably huge comforting advancements… Why? To get lazy. (Of course if you read this article with your boss, you should answer “To get more things to be done!”)
What about retirement? What is a retirement? It is a level of laziness, which you can earn by going through corporate years. And not everyone can see it. Because that kind of level approximately happens 60 years old’ing around, and not everyone could see that age since lifespans and human beings varied.
And human brain takes the easy path while it operates. Your mortal capital wishes is none of this mighty organ’s business. For those who want to go deeper can start by looking at the “Cognitive Miser Theory” ( According to wikipedia definition this theory suggests that humans, valuing their mental processing resources, find different ways to save time and effort when negotiating the social world.)
Key to “Change” word is “Embrace”
Developing a new super uber advanced product, or service alternative for an product or service does not necessarily bring the Change. Developing something which people will “embrace”, brings the Change. Techie geeks miss this point and their advancement fails because of this reason. The reason of failing for some faster, better, more advanced products is: they are totally new. What “Totally New” mean? They mean “De Novo!” They mean ‘From scratch’. Ok dear product, software, service developers, here is a voice from consumers: We and our brains don’t want to start from scratch. We are happy where we are. We are in our comfort zone with current product. We just adapted it. We spent time while we adapted. We have our inner pace for advancement. So we will pass, thank you very much.
If you want to change us, if you want us to use your product or service, develop a product or service which will become easily understandable by our brains. Don’t make our brains to deal with the words “how does this work” “How will I adapt”, “How will I survive this feature mayhem”. Don’t go against our nature. If you really want your solutions be used, really want your solutions used, then your product or service shall better praise our laziness, son. Develop products or services according to this mindset.
And I salute those who achieve the last sentence. Thank you for reading.
Adnan Uludag