Ever heard of ‘The Amazon Effect’ in usability testing?
Picture this: you’re testing an e-commerce website for a client. But right when the participants you’re observing are about to buy something, they open Amazon in a new tab. When asked why, they say:
I’m not here to tell you about The Amazon Effect, but how one might use the story of The Amazon Effect. What if second-order outcomes like this are actually a persuasive way to explain your intent? They're more likely to make your colleagues sit up and listen.
What if someone at Amazon had said:
Simon Sinek encourages founders to ‘start with why’ for a company mission. For example, Lady Ada started the open source hardware company Adafruit in order to make technology more accessible and understandable to the public. A compelling mission motivates the whole organisation with purpose: but we can use this same approach for something more specific.
In Death by Screens, I propose that designs are best introduced with really clear outcomes in mind. Usually some combination of a business objective, and a user need. And you should include these, for clarity’s sake, but let’s face it: no-one’s going to be all that surprised when you tell them your aim is to ‘increase the conversion rate with better search results’.
So let’s add another type of goal. A secret ambition should have an element of the nod and wink, the inside joke, that something beyond the usual business fluff.
Secret ambitions often start like this:
And lead to an ambitious, second-order effect. The less obvious, the better.
But hey, while it’s useful to get other people smiling at your cheeky ambition, the real reason you should dream of less-obvious outcomes is that they will inspire you. When we get stuck in the weeds of a design, it’s really easy to lose sight of why we’re doing something, the greatness we’re aiming for.
Write your secret ambitions for selfish reasons: they sharpen one’s own mind to what’s important.
For much more depth on goals as a method of persuasion, I highly recommend Jeroen van Geel's Pitching Ideas: make people fall in love with your idea.
My book "Death by Screens: how to present high-stakes digital design work and live to tell the tale" - is here to help designers tell better stories about their work. Get three winning presentation tips from the book by signing up below!
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