I’ve been training people in the UX and CX space for nearly two decades, and something that you often see, especially in the newbies, is a strong reaction to bad design.

“That’s dumb!” or '“What idiot designed that?!” is a common refrain, when facing something that appears on the surface to be sub-par design.

It’s true that many things in life seem counter-intuitive, until you dig a little deeper. Sometimes there are historical reasons why it’s difficult, or even impossible, to move towards a simpler or more logical design - the QWERTY keyboard is one simple example of this. But often there are other reasons why what seems at first glance to be poor design may be down to other limitations we’re not necessarily aware of.

I caught up with a video from the Verge this week about elevator buttons, and interesting issues they can cause. Definitely worth a look. And it was a great example of how ‘dumb!’ on the surface can translate into ‘unavoidable!’ when you dig a little deeper. In the video the Verge team struggle with elevator buttons in their building that seem to have a mind of their own. They dig into the experience, do some research and work out what’s happening (most probably) behind the scenes. And it turns out that what looks like a surface-level poor design issue turns out to be a potentially unavoidable issue with different systems and integration, behind the scenes.

Why that matters

It’s an important lesson to learn. A relatively early mantra in the UX space was ‘The User Is King!’ What they wanted counted most, what made sense to the user was all that mattered, and damn the torpedoes. It was a reaction to the inmates running the asylum, to years of programmers ruling the roost when it came to interfaces and experiences.

And like all reactionary movements it eventually balanced out. Now we all know that whilst what the user wants is absolutely important, it doesn’t necessarily overrule business need, service design or technical limitations. All elements need to be finely tuned and balanced to ensure all goals are met.

It’s also really key that we don’t get bogged down in over-engineering a solution. There’s a myth about the early days of the space race that goes something like this; NASA spent millions of dollars developing the ballpoint pen when they realised that ordinary pens wouldn’t work in space. The Russians merely handed their Cosmonauts a pencil. Not true, but it has the sound of something that could easily be true in another reality somewhere. Simple solutions don’t always have to be super thoughtful and intelligent designs, sometimes you can make do.

So, why a band-aid?

It’s often the case that the perfect solution is like the perfect life - a lovely thought exercise that’s always going to be somewhat out of reach. In the case of the Verge video and their elevator issue, the best solution turned out to be a sign that tells the user how to navigate the technology shortfall and get to their floor easily with less button mashing and teeth gnashing. It’s a band-aid solution, not fixing the underlying problem but finding a way to reduce the impact of it for now.

Fixing the technology underneath this could cost the building owners tens of thousands of dollars, or may not even be possible without replacing other systems. Whereas that band-aid costs a few cents, and more-or-less makes the problem go away, for now.

Sometimes, our job can be to remove the pain - not necessarily fix the underlying problem.

But as every parent knows, one can be just as good as the other, most days.