We rushed our redesign, solving one problem but creating many others. (Evan Spiegel)

Ah, the wonderful world of unintended consequences. One of my favorite topics.

Now, if you’re not familiar with Evan Spiegel, I’ll just let you know that he’s the CEO and co-founder of Snap Inc., the company that brought us Snapchat. He was also the youngest billionaire in history, at age 25, back in 2015.

What is he talking about? Well, back in the last quarter of 2017, Snap released a new design of their popular app. To make a long story short, it didn’t work. I’m talking losing 3 million users, a dip in brand impression from 30 to 8, and ad views and revenue going down 36%. Ouch!

I won’t go into the gory details of what they actually did, but suffice it to say that it was a perfect example of unintended consequences. I mean, the company certainly didn’t mean to lose all those users and revenue now, did they?

How did it happen? Once again, I won’t go into the details. Heck, I don’t even know them (though I certainly could guess). I looked around, but I’m not sure that’s something the company felt comfortable sharing.

Now, my first question, as a usability engineer, is, of course … DIDN’T ANYBODY DO ANY TESTING?  How did they know this redesign was going to work? Where did their feedback come from? Did they get any feedback?

Now, Spiegel points to rushing things, but I think there’s a lot more to unintended consequences than just that. Hubris, for example. Or denial. Or short-term thinking. Or what have you …

Now, of course, you can put a lot of thought into something before you attempt it. Honestly, though, I don’t think you can still predict everything that might happen. And that’s why I think it’s so important to get something usability-tested. A/B might work, of course, but that means it’s live. Testing lets you get some feedback in a “safe space.”  Might even give you some idea why it wasn't working.

Whatever you do, though, do something! Get some kind of feedback!

For some reason, most pix of Evan also feature his wife

It’s not what you don’t know that hurts you. It’s what you know that ain’t so. (Will Rogers)

Sometimes I prefer my clients to be ignorant. In my experience as usability engineer, user researcher, and even instructional designer and tech writer, I’ve just found it so much easier when my clients are blank slates.

Of course, clients who really know what they’re doing are the best of all. Those, however, are pretty few and far between. It’s much more common to get somebody in the middle. And, to throw in another quote, “A little learning is a dangerous thing” can definitely apply to that middle zone.

I’m always amazed at how many things people “in the middle” just don’t get, or don’t get right. There’s probably a number of reasons why however.

The first may simply have to do with exposure. Clients may have simply heard of an idea only in passing – a mention at a conference from last year, an article they once read, a conversation in the hallway. In those situations, subtleties and true understanding are really hard. Overly broad strokes and misconceptions, on the other hand, are really easy.

Usability engineers always know, though, that “it depends,” and things are never as simple as they appear. A good example here might be the number of clicks rule. A couple of years back, marketeers fell in love with the idea that everything should be a couple of clicks away from the homepage. On the surface of it, this actually made some sense.

Some unintended consequences of that, however, included some particularly dense homepages and menus. Further, results from testing showed that users didn’t really resent (or were even aware of) the number of clicks, and were happy to go their merry way as long as they felt confident where they were going. Ironically, this idea of “information scent” could be stronger with a deeper IA than with a shallower one. 

It may also have a lot to do with where you got started. A perfect example here is personas. If you have some background in marketing, when you here the word “persona,” you automatically translate that into “segments.” It’s not the same! And it can be really hard to adjust gears and understand the difference. 

That actually reminds me a lot of the linguistic concept of false friends. Not to go too far off topic, but that’s when a word you know in English, say, doesn’t mean the same as a word in another language that sounds just like it. For example, don’t say you’re embarazada the next time you slip up with something with your Spanish-speaking friends. It means “pregnant”! 

Will Rogers doing a little man-machine research 

on some early radio communications hardware

Will Rogers also said:

• "People’s minds are changed through observation, and not through argument."