DON DODGE: Hi, I'm Don Dodge.
And this is "Google Root Access," the show for startups
about issues that every startup has.
Today, we're going to talk about user
experience and user design.
I have a special guest, Nazmul Idris, who works on the
Android team and focuses on user design.
Thanks for joining us.
NAZMUL IDRIS: Thank you.
I'm glad to be here.
DON DODGE: So, you talked about reducing friction and
creating a great first minute experience.
So what do you mean by friction?
NAZMUL IDRIS: That's a very good question.
If you were to measure the emotional response a user has
when they're interacting with your application, and let's
say those responses were negative, if they were angry
or frustrated, anything that causes a negative reaction or
negative emotional reaction is considered friction.
So it's not just that it's good practice not to have
friction in your applications.
If you consider prospect theory, which is a
psychological thing, it tells us that for every negative
interaction you have with something, you need three
positive interactions.
So for a startup with limited funding, limited everything,
it's much easier to remove friction than to come up with
really amazing experiences to delight someone.
So it's good for startups to get into the mindset of
removing friction and delighting rather than just
delighting but then also leaving friction in, which now
you have to work three times as hard, essentially.
DON DODGE: So by friction do you mean preventing the user
from getting at the meat of what they want to do, like
putting steps that they have to take or sign up or that
kind of thing?
Is that what you mean by friction?
NAZMUL IDRIS: Exactly.
So it's important for your application to understand that
the user has a limited amount of bandwidth, limited amount
of focus or cognitive load.
Like you can't just ask people to do complex things without
actually first letting them know what the value
proposition is for them to actually take those actions.
Additionally, you want to simplify those complex actions
as much as possible.
So it's very deep in how you have to
consider removing friction.
DON DODGE: So most applications have an account
creation process, sign-in process, maybe they have a
walk-through or demo or something that they make you
go through.
What's your advice on that kind of thing?
How do you handle account creation or demos or
walk-throughs?
NAZMUL IDRIS: That's a very good question.
The most important thing right away when you actually first
experience an application is for the application to give
you an idea of what it's going to do.
And if it needs you do something like sign
in to tell you why.
Then you'll be more eager to actually, for
example, sign in.
Now, once you've understood why you need to sign in and
then you go to sign in, the application developer should
take a lot of effort to remove any friction from
that step as well.
So that involves using something like sign in with
Google, or log in with Facebook, or
something like that.
Does that make sense?
DON DODGE: Yeah.
So my son has an app that he built, and he required
Facebook sign in to create an account before you got going.
And he called it the Facebook wall.
Because a big percentage of the users wouldn't do that
because they hadn't yet seen the value of the app.
So he allowed them to get into the app and start using it and
do a few things before requesting that
they create an account.
So is that an example of friction and how you might
handle making it work?
NAZMUL IDRIS: Yes.
That's a great example.
So what your son did was instead of putting the onus on
the user to do something that they didn't know that they
wanted to do, they are continuing to interact and
engage with the application, which makes them want to
engage with it more.
And the more they want, the more they'll interact with it.
And they're OK with spending more time and energy with the
application once they have an idea that there's going to be
a good reward.
DON DODGE: So that's sort of like progressive disclosure or
progressive disclosure of features, where you give them
more, don't overwhelm them in the beginning.
NAZMUL IDRIS: Exactly.
And not only that, but if you consider things like sign in
or sharing, you don't need permissions to do
everything up front.
So let the user kind of flow through the application a
little bit.
And when they need to do something, whether they need
to be signed in, or they need to share, then kind of load
them with kind of overcoming that step.
DON DODGE: So let's say I have a rather complex application
that has lots of features and lots of surface area.
How do I make that first minute experience be
delightful?
NAZMUL IDRIS: So that's actually not easy to do.
But if we use an example like Google Now, that's actually a
fantastic, fantastic example of how to do it right.
If you consider Google Now, it's taking into account a
tremendous number of signals.
It's a very complicated thing.
But when you first launch Google Now, it gives you like
a sample card.
And it kind of gets you thinking.
It basically says, hey, if you sign in, or if you opt in to
using Google Now, these are the amazing things that you
might be able to do.
It doesn't really contextualize
them for you yet.
It just gives you samples.
So then you say, OK, yes I'm in.
That's the message.
Then it starts showing you sample cards.
And those sample cards aren't yet tailored to your life.
Or it's just giving like, for example, the weather.
The simple things.
The idea there is that as you live in Google Now more and
more, Google Now unlocks more and more and more
capabilities, and it asks you to customize it more or
interact with it more.
And so it doesn't feel like friction.
It feels like it's enticing you to do something that you
wanted to do.
And it's delighting you with unexpected things you didn't
even know you needed, but when it showed you,
you were like, wow.
I didn't know you could do that.
So that's the reaction that we're trying to get.
It's that moment of delight.
And those can be engineered.
It's not random that those things happen.
It takes a lot of work, but it can be done.
DON DODGE: So making that first minute experience to be
delightful is really, really important.
Progressive disclosure of features and letting them into
it, reducing friction, those are the keys to making it
successful.
NAZMUL IDRIS: Exactly.
DON DODGE: Great.
Well, thank you for joining us.
That was a great show.
Join us again when we cover other topics
of interest to startups.
I have a special offer for you for "Google
Root Access" viewers.
We're offering a $2,000 credit for the Google Cloud Platform.
So if you're a developer that's developing an app that
uses a cloud backend, it's a great opportunity for you to
get started and get a $2,000 credit.
Thank you very much for joining us.