Reading everyday “little inconveniences” through a UX lens
You tap your card at the ticket gate in the morning rush, and a “beep” stops you in your tracks.
The barcode won’t register at the supermarket self-checkout.
At the hospital, you fill out the same information on the intake form every time.
These everyday “little inconveniences” can actually be explained from the standpoint of UX (user experience). UX isn’t limited to apps and web services. It touches every part of our lives.
Ticket gate errors: why are they so embarrassing?
Every so often, when you tap your card at a ticket gate, a red light comes on and it beeps. You hold up the flow of people around you, and plenty of us have had that slightly embarrassing experience.
From a UX perspective, the problem lies in the “experience when an error occurs.”
A mechanism to tell people about an insufficient balance or an authentication error is necessary, but today’s design emphasizes it negatively with “sound plus light,” which adds to the user’s psychological burden.
If riders were told about a low balance by a phone notification beforehand, or if the error could be expressed in a more neutral way, the inconvenience would be eased.
In UX, the “experience when an error occurs” is exactly what matters.
Why self-checkout feels like a hassle
Supermarket self-checkouts. They’re supposed to be convenient, yet in practice there are moments that feel inconvenient: “the barcode won’t register,” “the payment screen is complicated and makes me flustered.”
That’s because they’re designed “around the machine,” not “around people.”
When the machine’s needs come first, such as the scanner’s angle or the steps for using the touchscreen, users end up having to make extra effort.
The foundation of UX is “adapting to people.” Making machines smarter alone can’t deliver true convenience.
Hospital intake forms: why do we have to fill them out every time?
At hospitals, you’re sometimes asked to write your address and medical history on an intake form every single time.
From the user’s side, that raises the question and the stress of “I already wrote this before, so why again?”
This is a classic example of “UX that fails to reuse information.”
If information entered once online were reused, the burden would drop for both patients and staff.
UX can be greatly improved by “finding ways to eliminate repetitive burdens.”
Summary
We tend to accept small everyday inconveniences as “just how things are.”
But when we look at them again through a UX lens, they turn into “room” for improvement.
- How do we design the experience when errors occur?
- Adapt to people’s behavior, not to the machine’s convenience
- Reduce repetitive burdens
Good UX means “not blaming the user for why something can’t be used.”
Design work is also the accumulation of efforts to reduce these small “ugh” moments.
What Super XX Studio Can Do
At Super XX Studio, we support renewals that go beyond refreshing the UI to include user research and experience design.
“We want to fix how it looks, but we’re not sure it will lead to results.”
“We haven’t been able to sort out where the problems are.”
If that sounds like you, please get in touch. We’ll propose a renewal that delivers results even with limited resources.
Wondering what to prepare before getting in touch? See “5 Things to Sort Out Before Talking to a Design Studio.”