Anticipatory design involves making decisions on behalf of the user to simplify their experience. Using data, we can make assumptions about user needs and remove redundant choices from the user journey by limiting their options. This helps to counteract decision fatigue and improves the overall user experience.
The goal of anticipatory design is to:
eliminate as many steps as possible and find ways to use data, prior behaviors and business logic to have things happen automatically, or as close to automatic as we can get. – Aaron Shapiro
Marli Mesibov's talk at CSForum was about using anticipatory design to be the Alfred to your consumer's Batman. Alfred makes Bruce Wayne into a hero by anticipating his every need (in a way that isn't creepy because Batman trusts him).
Anticipatory design best practices
According to Marli, the best practices of anticipatory design are:
- Focus on context
- Beware of over-personalisation (don't lose the user's trust)
- Allow the user to control their personalisation settings
Different audiences will want different amounts of context, personalisation and control from your website/service.
Using anticipatory design in your website
Some ways you can use anticipatory design in your website are:
- Make suggestions based on a user's past choices
- Pre-populate forms with data you've already collected
- Use automated emails to respond to user actions as they happen
- Use smart content to personalise the user experience
The anticipatory design approach
Ask yourself:
- Can this task be made easier or more simple for the user?
- Is there too much information? Is it overwhelming or sending too many messages?
- Is the user likely to make an error here? How can we keep them on the right path?
- Do we already know the answer? Do we need to ask again? Can we pre-fill?
- What's the best medium to offer this information? Is a list good? A video? An infographic?
- Can we make accurate and useful recommendations based on previous user experience?
- Is this the best we can offer? Is there something else useful we could provide our user with at this stage?
We're becoming more and more reliant on the digital world for the everyday management of our lives. We don't want cluttered and difficult experiences. We want simplicity. That's why anticipatory design is so important. Anticipatory design makes experiences like opening a bank account, paying a bill or booking a hotel room seamless and effortless – it works exactly as you expect.
There's so much that goes into making a great website; don't forget the importance of content strategy and growth-driven design.
So go forth and make simple, easy processes for your users - they'll thank you for it.
