Kind UIs: Creating interfaces that promote user wellbeing

Designers need to prioritize user wellbeing and happiness over efficiency. We currently create expectations of instant gratification, that then in turn, negatively affects user’s mental health.

Photo from Vecteezy

The average person picks up their phone 1,500 times a week, checks their email automatically without thinking 40% of the time, uses their smartphone 5 or more hours a day, and has an attention span of 8 seconds.

When we take a look at smartphone statistics even just 8 years ago, we find smartphone usage has increased by a staggering 230%. Coincidently, stress levels have drastically increased as well with more than half of Gen-Z now being diagnosed with mental health issues, a 26% increase as compared to Baby Boomers.

UX and Product Designers are partially at fault. We have conflated a good user experience with an efficient user experience, creating increasingly untrusting and stressed users.

This article addresses some of the product design decisions our community has made that negatively impact user wellbeing. It then provides an initial solution as to how we can mitigate digital stress: the creation of Kind User Interfaces.

Dangers In The Current Digital Ecosystem

tl:dr

1. Information Overload — the plethora of information on the web is incredibly distracting to users and can be detrimental to our mental health.
2. Applications are stretched too thin — Applications with too many functions don’t have focus, leading to a crippled user experience.
3. Choice Overload — Yes, the typical tidbit on Hick’s Law, but people still don’t seem to follow this rule!
4. JTBD over Happy User Models — We have conflated task completion with user satisfaction when in reality they needed to be measured separately.
5. The Settling vs. Density Divide — There is friction between users’ attention span and the complexity of the interfaces we provide them. Answers need to be direct and easily located.

Information Overload