Just the other day we were having a brainstorming session about a future mobile application we’re developing. One of the issues we discussed was how we can speed up the search response time – the time the user waits for results to load after submitting their query.

While we’re chipping away milliseconds in every way we can by tweaking the service’s responsiveness with every release we do, we’re serving results as fast as possible and some aspects – such as network latency – is out of our control and can’t be made any faster.

Then it struck me – maybe we were thinking about it the wrong way. The problem was reminiscent of a real story, as quoted by Bruce Tognazzini of the Nielsen Norman Group:

“A classic example occurred in the 1930s in New York City, where “users” in a large new high-rise office building consistently complained about the wait times at the elevators. Engineers consulted concluded that there was no way to either speed up the elevators or to increase the number or capacity of the elevators. A designer was then called in, and he was able to solve the problem.
What the designer understood was that the real problem was not that wait time was too long, but that the wait time was perceived as too long. The designer solved the perception problem by placing floor-to-ceiling mirrors all around the elevator lobbies. People now engaged in looking at themselves and in surreptitiously looking at others, through the bounce off multiple mirrors. Their minds were fully occupied and time flew by.”

When solving any problem it’s easy to get tunnel-vision. It’s important to remind yourself “why are we doing it this way”, take a step back and readdress the actual problem. Rather than walking along, looking down at the pavement for ideas, try looking up at the sky…

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 8th, 2009 at 12:18 pm and is filed under Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.