The user experience ‘slide’

A slippery slope (hopefully)

A process or task that a user needs to complete is like a slide. At the start of the task the user is at the top, and their goal is to get to the bottom of the slide. As designers our job is to enable the user to complete the task as smoothly and easily as possible.

Every time a user has to stop or slow down to think, or consider options, or when an interface doesn't respond to input immediately or predictably, or any other of the many little things that can happen in any interface design, we are adding grains of sand to the slide.

A few grains of sand are inevitable in almost any task we ask our users to complete, but they soon add up. And nobody wants to slide on sandpaper.