A website coaxed me into doing something I committed not to do.

They did this by removing friction.

Having spent 28 years developing tech products, I'm always keen on learning how products and services create frictionless experiences.

Here's how it went.. 🧵👇🏼

I placed some footwear in my cart.

While checking out from my cart, they offered me three options:

• set up an account

• log into an existing account,

• or check out as guest.

I opted for guest.

(I have enough accounts, I reasoned.)

After submitting payment information, they requested an email for sending a receipt.

An electronic receipt would be great should I need to return the product, or should the product not arrive at all.

So I went along.

Clickety-clack.

Upon completing the purchase, the site surprised me:

"An account has been created for you. You need to set up a password to use it, however. Would you like to set up a password?"

Using a password manager, generating a password was a couple of clicks .

Click-click. Done.

Even though I knew I didn't want yet another account, I had just created one.

I wasn't mad.

I was amused!

Indeed, if they don't bombard me with enough emails (which would make me unsubscribe), this might lead to further business with them.

Probably what they wanted.

What’s the point of describing this?

I know I was coaxed but I didn't feel manipulated.

"Would you like to set up a password" indicated I could ignore their invitation.

But I had already provided name, address, phone number. Might as well get it all recorded.

In product dev, we often forget we compete for user attention against a myriad distractions.

Shiny objects like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Tok Tok.

When we offer users an onerous process (e.g. creating an account before the sale), we may lose the sale to cute cat videos.

Instead treat an onerous task as a "just-in-time" task.

Defer such a task until it's no longer deferrable.

Better yet, make it optional.

If a sale now is more important than the potential of a future sale, make the sale first. Minimize friction.

tl;dr

How do we engage users, when engagement requires an onerous task?

• onerous tasks generate friction

• defer such tasks until after user is engaged

• remove as much fiction as possible from such tasks

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I challenge models in software testing, management, and society, to discern truth from narrative, so as to build more effective human systems.