The Need for Magic
March 30th, 2008
What makes great software?The magic of software is in the small things. Often, these things are tiny and not noticed by users because they silently make the application a pleasure to use. All the user knows is that they are happy. A thousand tiny moments.
Here’s some examples from my experience:
- Google Reader: When I scroll down my list of news, Reader starts to load the next batch of news before I run out. The timing is perfect. I don’t need to worry about webby things like ‘next page’ etc… I just want the news so I scroll down, infinitely with a smile on my face. It works equally well with the keyboard, mouse and scroll wheel. If I want to scroll down my folders instead, Reader changes intuitively when I move my mouse over that list instead of the river of news. I only notice these tiny details when I paid special attention. Before that I just knew I liked it. Magic.
- Wordpress: When I am writing a big blog post and run out of room in the edit box, I just drag the window bigger. No thought required. Now I can see my whole post on the screen in one view. Magic.
- iTunes: I can double click anything to play an intuitive playlist. I can double click an artist and all their stuff starts to play. Same with Album and Genre. Magic.
- Shozu: Magically appears on my phone when I have taken a picture and asks me if I want to send it to Flickr. If I say Yes, it uploads it invisibly to me, taking care of all failures. If I wander to a roaming data zone, it pauses the upload and sends me an SMS telling me it has done so. Magic.
- MS Office 2007: When I highlight some text, a mini-toolbar appears right next to my mouse pointer so that I can format it without needing to move to the other side of the screen. Magic.
Bad experiences are equally silent, equally unconscious in the most part to the user. All they know is they don’t feel good.
We need to care about the magic
Filed under Software Development |One Response to “The Need for Magic”
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I am a proud co-founder of
Wow, I haven’t read a blog saying something good about MS Office for quite a while, that takes courage
You’re absolutely correct - it’s often the little magical details that build product loyalty.
It’s an art, though, to balance the subtle placement and function of magical details against the need for user discovery.
For instance, if the Office Assistant was zooming out, jiggling and explaining every nuance of the mini-toolbar the first few times it appeared, that would be infuriating enough to make me never use it again, almost.
Conversely, I never knew I could drag the Wordpress edit box to make it larger (so thanks!) I’ve been a Wordpress user for a long time and wish I’d known about it a bit sooner.
The effectiveness of Apple’s magic discovery seems to vary according to age - younger people find it easier to discover the magic tricks by themselves, older people seem to need a little help. It might be related to the race memory of fear-of-experimenting that older computer users have as a result of decades using PCs that don’t tolerate experimentation well.
At the other end of the scale, I love Skitch to bits, but feel I’ve had to work a bit harder than really necessary to discover not just the magic, but even some of what should be obvious to the casual user. The Plasq crew try to help by popping up context-sensitive bubbles all over the place. But bubbles pop and unpop too quickly for many users and they can get frustrated with having to do so much searching for ‘hidden’ UI.
Lots of context-sensitive help in your product can be a sign that maybe your interface is too clever. No love in the social sphere for your product is a sure sign that it’s not clever enough. Fierce, undying love for your product in the face of competitors, discounting, more features - that’s a sign that you have the magic just right…
…or that you own the OS!