Breaking User Behavior Patterns

Welcome everyone to the Product Bakery. I'm here with Christian as usual. Hi Christian, how are you? Hello Alex, how's it going? Beautiful. I'm quite happy to see you again. It's not that easy in the holiday periods to get podcast recordings arranged, but we're still there every week. We're trying to push it through as you see with less interviews in this season. It's the summer break. Yeah, or maybe you also simply enjoy listening to us. I mean, so far the feedback has been positive but happy to hear if you miss something in our format. We're constantly iterating, but for now you will have to listen to our voice in the meantime and we will definitely pick up the interview season again once we're all back from our holidays and once we are a little bit more relaxed. Yeah, the pipeline is already big, so keep your eyes or your ears peeled. Is that actually right? I have no idea. That's the downside of not being native. Yeah, I mean, there are so many amazing German phrases that I can't translate into English and people will just think... But ears peeled, is that a German phrase? No, you should keep your eyes peeled. That's an English phrase. Yeah, okay, okay. I was like, what is it in German? What is it in Italian? I have no idea. You see, it's like too many languages mixing together. Too many languages, absolutely. Oh my God. Anyway, the holiday season, Christian, I was listening to a podcast today, so I also have my list of podcasts that I go through. Maybe shout out to the guys from Layout. It's a design podcast, really. What I have to say every once in a while. Fun guys, so listen in if you are part of our design audience. And if you want something a little bit more design focused, do you have kids crying in the background? Oh, you hear that? That's Christian swearing in German in the background. I was like, I didn't know you were that active in the last couple of months. All right. So nevertheless, I was listening to their podcast. I actually wanted to talk about something with you. What the guys were discussing is the latest beta of iOS, of macOS. I think we're at 15 now. And it was a detailed discussion on an element that Apple launched in the new Safari browser. And it's like the bubble URL bar at the bottom of the page. And I think for everyone who's like a little bit around Twitter or news pages and active in the design community, it's a very controversial topic, right? Some people love it. A lot of people hate it. But that actually got me thinking about how we use and how we should design with patterns in mind. I think like probably, Christian, you remember pretty much every time when one of the big companies redesign something, people hate it. Like the Google icons. Google icons. I don't know. Do you remember what it was like 10 years ago when Facebook made the redesign? So I remember recently when they launched a new layout and I hated it and I'm still hating it. Yeah. But let's not go there. I think I have no idea what Facebook is doing at the moment. Yeah. No one knows that. Yeah. I don't want to talk about Facebook. I also don't want to talk about the URL bubble. But still, what I want to discuss is generally the fact that you see a lot of these big companies like being innovative or trying to be innovative. They push some things. They seem unintuitive at the beginning. But then after a couple of months or a couple of weeks, people get used to it. So I mean, The shitstorm stops at some point. Yeah. But do you think it's only like the big companies that are actually in the place where they can push new interactions or new patterns? Because I always feel like, okay, small companies then jump on this train and just follow what the big guys do. So Apple is like moving the URL bar to the bottom of the page. I'm pretty sure that a lot of apps will in the future change to similar interactions for the good or the bad. And here it stands. Also, when you work with your teams, to what extent do you think it's good to follow existing patterns? And when can you innovate? And how do you innovate? Because I think whenever you try to do something that's different from the current normal, people initially reject it, right? I would say it depends. First of all, what is the goal from Apple? What do they want to improve? I remember when they started changing from square morphism to flat design back then, there were certain motivations to make the screen look easier and to change the user experience back then. And for sure, there are certain things that have been requested, like the ability of multitasking and you can close multiple apps, which wasn't there, which was there on Android, but the Apple community was complaining all the time. It's not there. So Apple is usually a company that is slower when it comes to adapting to change, but also the big companies are experimenting. For example, let's take the MacBook and the touch bar. That's a feature that no one ever asked for and no one really, in my opinion, still needs, but it's still there. And I'm just waiting for the day they're going back and removing it. And I'm not sure how long the URL bar will stay on the bottom of the screen, but yeah, I think it's maybe also an experiment. Wasn't it like that also when they launched the iPhone 10 and they removed the button? I think that was something where many people asked for anyway, a lot of time. To get the button back or to remove it? No, to get rid of it. Oh man, I know so many people who still hate it. Really? Yeah. And it was a change. It took people, I wouldn't say quite some time because you usually easily get onto it, but a lot of people struggled with this new interaction. And I think like also if I look at a traditional product development process or design process specifically, we do user testing. If my team would launch a new iPhone without a button and a new interaction to close windows, probably the initial reaction of people would be bad, right? It depends on a bigger picture because what we don't see right now and what we are maybe not looking at enough is the bigger picture because removing the button was not the only change that Apple has introduced. Because with the launch of the iPhone 10, a new area started of Face ID, right? Because back then the button was used to take your fingerprint and make sure you can unlock the phone with your unique fingerprint. But at some point they realized, okay, they are going to change their strategy away from fingerprint to Face ID. And my question would be, when does it going to be applied on the MacBook? So therefore I think there's much more behind that decision than just the UX part because it has also a lot of impact on the hardware, on the long-term development of the iPhone. Honestly, I don't know where they are going with the iPhone 28, but I think they're setting the foundation right now with the changes. Yeah, but then let's take a step back. You're saying, okay, it's like part of the bigger strategy. And let's say there is like a strategic decision in a company and you have a team working on, on implementing it. Do you say, okay, fuck it, we're not testing it. Or how are you looking at it? Because you will have people who reject it initially. And it's also natural, right? Like I think we humans are used to muscle memory, to using the same patterns, right? If I go to, let's take Webflow because it's the famous tool that I mentioned all the time and they changed the way I can create a new note or a new bullet, I would probably initially be pissed. It might fit their strategy. Yeah, it might fit the strategy. Absolutely. On the other hand, so to your initial question, would I test it? The answer is yes, absolutely. And, but the question is also for what purpose are you testing the feature? So let's take an example that we used to have back then at SumUp, right? SumUp is a, is a company that provides card terminals and allows you to connect your app with the card terminal and initiate card transactions. So what I have is I have a terminal mode where I can enter an amount and then charge it amount to my customer. And back then when we were redesigning the app, we changed the keyboard to a modern version with a visual smaller touch area of the buttons themselves. So actually the top area was the same as before, but visually it looked smaller. So what did we do back then? If you remember, we were testing it with people and the feedback was of some people, it feels like it's harder for me to touch the buttons. But looking at the big picture and also the future of the screen itself that we wanted to develop, there was no other chance for us to keep it in that size. Actually, we didn't decrease the size. It was more a visual aspect than a real aspect when it comes to tapping the buttons. So we made that decision even with knowing that people are pissed about it. And sometimes you have to take that path as long as you are aware of the constraints and of the potential issues you're going to face. And I believe that user research or user interviews can help a lot to do damage control or get an understanding of the implications of such changes that will come with it. I think that's a good way to put it, because I think a bottom line where I also want to get to is that in all the famous cases, people got used to it. Damage control, I agree. Ideally, you don't entirely use your customer base, right? Absolutely. But if you want to truly innovate, you need to start to break these things. And maybe you're doing it right. Maybe you're doing it wrong. Apple already made some adjustments in their beta. They didn't completely launch it and they're blind driving the whole thing towards the wall. So also for them, it's some sort of an iterative approach, but they definitely want to do this. I think they follow the facts or their vision of generally, I'm not sure, probably it's related to reachability, to single-handedly using also bigger phones. So it makes a lot of sense to keep it there. And that's why they're going that direction. So I think, yeah, probably strategy is also a big and important part of it. Two more aspects. So one aspect is big companies just simply can do it. If you're Apple, with that customer base, you can make the changes, even if they're not nice. So you're not going to lose your entire customer base because the URL bar is now on the bottom. And even though customers are sometimes not happy with it, Apple is simply a company that can and will get through that criticism, right? They remove USBs, they remove chargers. Yeah. And they still sell more iPhones than ever, which is insane, but it is happening. To remove the CD drive. Of course, Apple is driving innovation for the good or the bad. They're just, they're following through whatever they think is best. Absolutely. But there's one more thing I would like to add because one of your questions at the beginning was, should I copy it? Because there are companies who start following those trends. And I remember a quote from one of my old bosses, wants to name the person, but he or she said back then, because we were redesigning when the flat design was introduced, we're going to design the apps exactly like Apple because they spent millions of user research and redesigning their whole patterns and everything. So we can't do anything wrong if we take that over. And I think that's something where you as a product manager, where the alarm bells should start ringing and definitely not follow something, even though everyone is doing it, it doesn't mean it's right. And it doesn't mean it's the right thing for your customers. Yes. And I would disagree to say they have millions, they test everything. There is so many examples of big companies where, and I think we talked about this, from outside, you always expect them to be, oh my God, they do everything right. But if you talk to individuals, haven't talked to anyone from Apple about this, but if you talk to individuals working in some of these big tech companies, there is a lot that is not best practices. I wouldn't necessarily follow something because of the assumption that whatever they do is perfect. But at the same time, I think it's good to follow someone like Apple because they definitely set trends. Whatever they do will affect how people get used to certain things. It gives direction. And to your point that they have also their struggles and not everything is researched. And also going back to German phrases, everyone is simply cooking with water. Therefore, it's a German phrase, not sure if that exists in English, but the gist is, we are all humans and not everything is perfect. And that even counts for big companies. My message is definitely, if you are a product manager or designer, it's nice to take a look at trends. It might be helpful to take them as direction, but it doesn't always make sense to follow them without evaluating if it goes hand in hand with what your customers need. Yeah. And I believe that sometimes, I'm always a big lover of having rules in place so that you can actively decide to break them. So following also existing patterns makes sense, but actively thinking of how can I break it if it makes sense for my customer. I think even if you're not Apple, you can take that step and you can try to innovate and you can try to make something. Slightly different, people will react negatively because it's in their nature. But if you're improving something and if you're following basic principles to improve something, and I mean, in the Apple case, again, proximity and so on, okay, people might hate it, but the underlying principles that you applied are actually supposed to improve the product. So once they get used to it, it will be better for everyone. And sometimes it's good to introduce friction or do it differently than it is done by the big ones. Simple example, take the YouTube app, take Google Calendar, Foursquare, if you remember that. So what they did is, especially on iOS, they used the material design patterns. And I have to admit, the usability was great. And sometimes it can be helpful to break the patterns and go into the different direction. But they did it because it's their kind of... Yeah. And Foursquare is not Google, but they still went back then, back to material designs and material style. But my message is, most important is that you do what the customer needs. And if you're going to destroy an entire experience just to be fancy, you are missing the target. And everyone cooks with water, but we bake with flour and water. With that said, have a nice day. Alex, talking to you soon. Bye-bye.