Does your design need an escape hatch? Interview with Tricia Okin

In today’s episode I discuss design issues with my friend Tricia Okin. Tricia is a user experience designer who helps organizations and businesses design websites and apps both for the benefit of the company and the user.

When I think of design, I’m reminded of something my dad frequently said when I was a boy. He’d say “stop trying to help me.” And that’s exactly how I feel about so many websites and apps.

Tricia recommends thinking about “escape hatches,” which is a more polite way of saying “stop trying to help me.”

For example, autofill and predictive text are both great functions, but sometimes they get in the way and make things worse. Why not have an easy way to x out of it?

Tricia also recommends allowing users to curate their own personalization.

Take LinkedIn as an example. You have hundreds of contacts, but if you interact with a few people in a week, LinkedIn will show those people all the time – as if you don’t have any other contacts.

It would be nice if the consumer / user could adjust the assumptions behind the recommendations.

Users need a way to “skip all the guff” and get back to what they were trying to do – not what the site assumes or expects the user wants to do.

You can find Tricia at ...
https://www.triciaokin.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/triciaokin/