What makes you good at solving problems?
UX or user experience refers to a user’s perceptions and responses that result from the use of a system, product or service. Today’s world is run by Apps managing various aspects of our lives, ranging from food to travel, shopping to banking. A ‘good user experience’ here, refers to the comfort and ease of use that a solution provides a user to their problem.
Consider the scenario of ride hailing. There are numerous ways in which such a solution may affect your day. It reduces the stress of commuting, eliminates the need for parking, and offers a seamless solution for getting around the city. The accessibility and ease of use contributes to a more efficient and flexible daily routine, reshaping the way you approach transportation in your day-to-day life.
Nevertheless, there could be some considerations worth noting. All, these solutions bring, may not be positive.
Let us imagine ourselves in the shoes of early humans, where the species had to hunt for food every day. The catch is that, in this hypothetical world, there’s Uber. You can hail a ride at your convenience paying for the service with a portion of your hunt. You are aware of certain regions where you can find prey. You book a cab to one of these destinations, pack your rudimentary arms and set out for a hunt. Each day, you go to one of the hunting zones, you are able to find prey, hunt and pay for the service. However, due to the regular use of cabs for traveling you are now deprived of the spatial mapping of the niche. One day, you find yourself with no prey; unable to pay for the cab you decide to walk back to your cave. Helpless in finding your way back, you leave yourself vulnerable to being hunted by other prominent predators, especially during the night. Relying on ‘Good UXs’ may leave you in situations you may not be prepared to face.
The Uber app’s design and color scheme are meticulously selected to ensure the user’s experience is seamless and intuitive. The deliberate high contrast between the app interface and the booking button enhances accessibility. But, does this affect your contrast perception in real life? Picture yourself driving down an unlit street during night hours. Would it be less difficult for you to discern a pothole, if you had not been interacting with such applications on a daily basis? In the days when humans were still hunters, such keen contrast perception could have been a life-saving advantage in detecting camouflaging predators.
Studies have shown that engaging in games has proven to be a valuable means of enhancing cognitive skills. Be it chess, 2048 or Call of Duty, the interactive nature of these games improve critical thinking, decision-making, and problem-solving skills. Unlike playing games, that require our active participation, an argument can be made that the availability of easy solutions to fairly complex problems, make us worse at solving problems that we encounter on a daily basis.
If you use Google Maps to get around the city, you’re more likely to see a deficit in your spatial awareness and mapping of your surroundings. This may lead you to forget where you put the pair of scissors last time after use.
Relying on Uber Eats for your daily meals can inadvertently deprive you of the chance to develop cooking skills. Given its convenient solution to the challenge of feeding yourself, you may never attempt to cook. If the solution is unreliable, you might break some eggs.
This may urge us to think over the following on similar lines,
Can a well-established routine become a hindrance for someone exploring new creative ventures?
Do established businesses struggle with adapting to change?
Are individuals with extensive experience in a specific field less flexible when exploring interdisciplinary projects?
Why does Sergio Perez find it difficult to drive the RB19, whereas Max Verstappen handles it with relative ease? Sergio, aged 34, has a specialized driving style, unlike Max (26) whose brain is still under development and is able to adapt more quickly. Human brains are most neuroplastic until the age of 25.
It is likely that good user experiences make us worse at certain aspects of our daily lives. However, is it really necessary for us to fret over such aspects?
Some of you: Hey Goose, we were not worried about them anyway.
True. But there are other actions we take that make us worse at solving problems that we wish to. Whether we realize this or not, often times, our mental bandwidth is consumed by tasks that we ourselves deem needless, or tasks that do not achieve what we pursue. We worry about saving twenty bucks on cab fare. We brood over performing well at our jobs, when we already might be. We worry about future and not acknowledge the good in our present.
Humans are no more hunter gatherers. We do not have to risk our lives to gather ourselves a meal everyday. We live in societies. Societies that have systems in place to solve problems that are trivial in today’s context. Humans have evolved. Your cell phone is essentially a part of you now. You don’t need to keep your to-dos in your head, it’s on your screen. This leaves you with more cognitive resources to direct towards other tasks. Parkinson’s Law, is an old saying that states that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion. The mental equivalent of this law would be the notion that your thoughts and concerns tend to occupy the mental space available. The more you prioritize a task, the more of your time and thoughts it should consume. Tasks that you choose to attend to, shall occupy your mental space, instead of the task of figuring out how to get to the office that day.
These user experiences are designed by people who faced these problems themselves. In the pursuit of solving their everyday trivial challenges, humans have ingeniously crafted products tailored to enhance their lives. From the annoyance of standing in queues for a money transfer to the frustration of forgetting passwords, humans have designed innovative solutions for solving their problems. This lead individuals to adopt these products and systems in order to alleviate these problems giving them opportunity to focus on other problems. An individual can invest their time in earning wealth, than spending time in worrying about saving twenty bucks on a cab ride. An individual can invest time in improving their health than accumulating wealth, when the later is at a balance and the former isn’t. If an individual pays more attention to solving trivial challenges, they are left with less time, cognitive capacity and opportunity to interact with and deal with other challenges.
Ultimately, it depends on the individual what problems they consider solving worthwhile.
What tasks do you prioritize? Do you really try to solve them? Does vulnerability scare you, be it physical, emotional or monetary? Do norms stop you?
We wish life to be clear, logical and organized. Only it isn’t. We face challenges, heartbreaks, lack of freedom; sometimes life feels like a mess.
Is it really? Or do we only consider it to be? We choose to brood over what’s stopping us from solving a problem, instead of thinking of ways to get around them.
Is it objectively wrong to worry about things? NO.
But does it hinder you from doing the things that you yourself wish to do? YES.
Does it leave you with less mental space and time to work on your desires? YES.
We make mistakes, we face resistance, we have our own shortcomings but it is ourselves that stops us from trying. Try picking up that pen, go to the gym, read the book you’ve always wanted to, take a walk to a nearby park, engage in video games. Take a cab to an unknown place and walk back home, if you are feeling lucky.
This essay is sponsored by Uber. (Or so I wish 🧚♀️)
Here, an attempt was made to urge you to explore your priorities. To take a pause to reflect on what problems you consider solving worthwhile.
I was on the fence about writing this one. Nevertheless, I’d like to share my unpolished thoughts. I certainly do not intend to preach. This is just an attempt to pen them down.
I hope you could relate to at least some of it.
Do let me know what you think.