Why we must design for forgiveness

(a plea for clemency by design)

tumpang lalu (“forgive me”) in a performance of Norhaizad Adam’s “Delay” by the P7:1SMA arts collective, Stamford Arts Centre, Singapore — photo: flaleman, 2022

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Without clemency, design falters in unacknowledged desire lines, quiet-quitting, desperation, and leaving with a bang.

The worst thing in design is lack of clemency. Missing a highway exit at the cost of having to drive on for 90 km before getting a chance to make a U-turn. Filling out an online form with dedication, only to run into time-out again and again. Loading the wrong document into a system and not getting a chance to repair your mistake. Going daydreaming for no more than a few minutes in a class or a workshop and never finding a point of re-entry that would permit you to get on track again.

Has it ever struck you that some of the products we use and experiences we go through either never saw the hand of a designer, or have been designed with the specific aim of being unforgiving?

to err is human
to forgive is design

Making mistakes is not just an inherent feature of being human. Nor is it a mere human right. To err is a human duty.

Said Jiddu Krishnamurti: “We are so afraid to fail, to make mistakes, not only in examinations but in life. To make a mistake is considered terrible because we will be criticized for it, somebody [or some algorithm or system] will scold us. But, after all, why should you not make a mistake? Are not all the people in the world making mistakes?”

JK also said: “If you are afraid of making mistakes, you will never learn.”

Which is an obvious truth. Even in today’s Agile environments, Agile teams and Scrum teams are encouraged not just to fail, but to fail fast. Now isn’t this absolutely unfair? — that developers are urged to fail fast, while we, the users, are being reprimanded and punished, sometimes severely, for an error made along the way, the proper design of which was their responsibility in the first place?

P7:1SMA arts collective performing at Stamford Arts Centre, Singapore — photo: flaleman, 2022

Clemency in design, commonly known as forgiveness, can be experienced before, during, and after a user experience.

First, forgiveness helps prevent errors before they occur. It provides for the user a sense of security and confidence — and fosters a willingness to engage in a learning process through exploration of unknown territory, making place for a feeling of going there and see what happens.

Second, forgiveness helps the user keep a sense of stability and support. She knows that when something falters, the system will understand and forgive and help her get back on track.

Third, forgiveness offers returns, second chances, and rescue lanes — making the errors made feel less bad, and keeping the user away from desperation, quiet quitting, or even running away in anger.

unrewarded effort causes quiet quitting, or, worse, leaving in anger — photo: flaleman, 2022

To implement clemency, the designer, like a gentle parent, usually falls back on seven techniques of forgiveness.

1 affordances 

Affordances are features of the design that invite the user to interact with it in a way that generally corresponds with what the designer had in mind. Good affordances bring about “correct” use, without the user having to refer to a manual to understand. But good affordances may lead to surprises as well. It happens that users miss out on affordances that were purposefully built-in, while discovering affordances elsewhere.

the unexpected planter-affordance of PET bottles and sewing thread

More typically, however, than possessing hidden or surprising affordances, unforgiving design typically has few to zero affordances. If this is the case, the user gets desperate before she even has found a way in.

2 entry point

Forgiving design should have multiple entry points. Sometimes a task looks daunting — and having missed “the” entry point without having been offered a short track back or a second chance, the user easily gives up.

The more entry points, the more confidence a user experiences while going through a process.

Begin anywhere, said Bruce Mau in his Incomplete Manifesto for Growth — and it is the designer’s task to make it possible for the user to do so.

[embed]some thoughts on mausive change & an incomplete manifesto for growth a continuation of twenty-five years of fun with bruce mau — the first 11 pointsmedium.com

The begin anywhere line is actually not Bruce Mau’s. It was John Cage, who told us that not knowing where to begin “is a common form of paralysis.”

The logic behind this is a simple one. In any complex system where the mechanics of causal conditioning are often too manifold and too messy for us to discern or understand, it remains forever unclear where everything we do shall be heading to. Now if the end result cannot be known, and we accept that every event, in turn, must be among the causes of yet something else, this means that the beginning of that something else is messy too. Therefore, our human endeavors are built on messy sources and go their own messy ways toward their own particular messy bunch of messy possible outcomes.

The user did not build the system. The user doesn’t know where it goes. The user is uncertain enough as it is. Do not build a train with just one door, that you cannot get to from the platform before the system locks and the train leaves.

platform issues at Kyōto railway station, photo: flaleman, 2018

3 reversibility of actions 

Forgiving design ensures that unintended or mistaken user actions can be reversed at all times, and not just once, but up to a few steps. The worst kind of fear is the fear that everything one does is irreversible. Not only does the fear of irreversibility of actions paralyze the user up to the point of desperation — it also reinforces in the user’s mind the fallacy of cause and effect, the infamous and killer post hoc, ergo propter hoc feeling, that incorrectly keeps convincing the user that he himself, and not the designer is to blame for everything that goes wrong.

4 safety nets

Forgiving design provides the user with adequate safety nets. When stuck into something, there is always a working plan B, which might have been less desired or is looked down upon as second rate by the designer, but might still be a nice option (or even the preferred pathway) for the user.

minimalist but effective: safety guidelines at the central waterfall at Changi Jewel, Changi Airport Arrival Hall, Singapore — photo: flaleman, 2022

5 guidelines

Guidelines come in different forms and shapes. Some are boundaries, some are warning signs of imminent danger. Guidelines of the first kind help and invite, while those of the second kind elicit extra care or fear. Often, designers are tempted to overdo guidelines, not implementing an either/or policy, but doubling down on boundaries accompanied by warnings. Sometimes this makes sense. But in other places, the overkill contributes to the user losing confidence in the self — which, in turn, is a bad omen for later journeys through designed processes.

I have traveled the highway from Srinagar to Leh many times: great fun for some, addictive to others, but my mother wouldn’t have wanted to know about it, and immediate family members don’t like the idea of repeating that journey too much either. boundary guidelines are either non-existent or don’t last long in the given circumstances. warning guidelines, however, are plenty: drivers collectively take ownership and blow their horns incessantly. this horn-blowing, being completely user-driven, might be seen as a desire line: the user’s corrective on a design that is by itself unsustainable.

okay, okay, we will. there was no way to get in anyway :)

6 confirmation

Design with confirmation means that at every (critical) step, some verification of intent is required before critical actions are allowed. When not overdone, this gives the user a pretty safe ride experience, building up the confidence that nothing much can go wrong and reversibility of errors is embedded in the design of the system.

sequence: critical phase, warning, confirmation (“please tick”), irreversible action

7 help

The last resort for forgiveness in design is a good working helpline — best delivered by human contact. A page with frequently asked questions is a nerve-wrecker. Its questions tend to be formulated with the aim of simplicity in their answers — and, for that very reason, the answers given are rarely satisfying.

When users call on a helpline for help, this should be considered a red light for design. The amount of help needed to successfully interact with a design is inversely proportional to the quality of the design. Users needing help are the best sign of bad design. When your helpline gets drowned, do not look for helpline automation or clever IVR solutions. When your helpline gets drowned, call your designer team back to the designer’s table. Because your product sucks, or its experience, or both.

So here is bringing it all together for designers of workshops or any other kind of customer journey:

Create forgiving designs by providing multiple points of (re-)entry along the way. Make sure that the participant recognizes your built-in affordances to learn and/or experience what it is that your design is designed for. Where the going gets tough, provide guidelines — and if this is not sufficient, put up warning signs. Don’t overdo it. Too many guidelines and warnings impede the gentle flow of interaction between the user and the designed experience. Too much increases the likelihood for quiet quitting or falling out with a bang. Consistently apply reversibilities, for they provide the participants with the reassurance that they can explore and experiment and err and fail. At critical points, provide safety nets and blocking devices requiring user-guided confirmation. Provide human-centric help, but read this as a sign that your design needs fixing.

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Thank you for reading!

[embed]Can designers think? (Dana Abdulla’s designerly list in memory of Michael Sorkin)francis-laleman.medium.com