The Seven Deadly Sins of UX – Sloth
Recently, I listened to an album that led me to look at the Seven Deadly Sins within UX. The Deadly Sins I will discuss are: Gluttony, Lust, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and Pride. In a previous post, I already talked about Gluttony, Lust, and Greed. This time we’ll look at Sloth. The other Deadly Sins will be discussed in future posts.
Just to be clear: everyone is guilty of these, it’s human. Probably not to the extreme degree I describe here. It’s not meant to bring down specific people or companies. It’s more of a reminder, for when it’s needed.
Sloth
Now we’ll talk about Sloth. Here, I have chosen multiple topics. Starting with the first: accessibility.
Or to be precise: not considering accessibility. It has happened to me more than once that someone said: “None of our users are colorblind, so we don’t need to consider that.” In my opinion, this is a short-sighted solution. Does this mean that no user who is colorblind is allowed to come? Or will you only adjust the application/website then and create a lot of double work? Nowadays, there are many tools that can indicate if your product has areas for improvement. Think of Google Lighthouse, MasterControl, or SauceLabs among many others.
What I also categorize under Sloth is an application or website that has never been updated. When you come to the homepage and it still has the Windows 95 look and feel. Not only has the market become more modern, but we as users also have modern expectations. Even if your website works like a charm, you are already at a disadvantage if people come to such an outdated website. Unfortunately, there is no exact science to know when you should update your product. However, every year various media outlets release the expected trends for the coming year. You can look at these to see if you can implement something that makes the product more modern or at least feel modern. Note, these are often band-aids. A complete redesign is unavoidable every few years.
By Jasper Blikman, Consultant and UX specialist