The Cruelty of Precision
April 27th, 2008What can you learn from me wanting to loose weight? For one thing, don’t keep full-fat peanut butter in the same house as an addict.
But in terms of design and interaction, I learned something from my new digital scale.
In the past, I’ve had spring-based scales that twirled a dial, and some digital models too, that simply read out a round number of pounds. But this new one, well, it wants to be very precise – down to a 10th of a pound. It re-calibrates with every use. In the world of bathroom scales, it’s pretty high tech.
It’s that last 10th of a pound that causes the most stress. It’s kind of like a little extra twist of the knife – “oh, you’re not even 215 even, pal, you’re actually closer to 216″.
So as a user, the level of stress in dealing with a piece of information is directly related to the exactness of that data. The more decimal points that my weight has, the more bent out of shape I’ll get about it.
If you’re a sales person, you know that precise numbers can impress a potential buyer – it sounds more impressive to say “256 horsepower engine” rather than “mid-200’s horsepower”.
But what if you’re trying to dissuade someone from thinking about a particular number? What comes to mind is a Flash pre-loader. Most of them dutifully count from 1 to 100% to indicate how much of the movie is loaded. Aren’t flash movie load times one of the most annoying aspects of interacting with that medium? Wouldn’t it make more sense to say “just getting started … now we’re cooking … almost there … “?
What do you think? Let me know in the comments below.