"This is microinteractions as product strategy: your product does one thing and one thing well. Reduce the product to its essence, its Buddha nature. If you find you want to add another feature to your product, that other feature should be its own product. Many appliances, apps, and devices, including the original iPod, follow this model. This is how many startups work (or at least began), from Instagram to Nest: they did one thing well. The “minimum viable product” can be one microinteraction."
I like the concept of a micro-interaction being the MVP. The one-size-fits-all approach has never seemed to work, whether it be in app design or leggings. The downside of breaking down one product into multiple products by microinteractions is that you end up with several products. For something like an app, users may end up overwhelmed by the options, and, as designers, we need to take into account cross-functionality. When it comes to apps, you end up with a lot of apps on your phone. On the other hand, most one-size-fits-all apps have features that users don’t need or want, thus creating friction and contributing to cognitive and decision fatigue. Given the pros and cons of having your MVP be one microinteraction, I agree with the product strategy of doing one thing and doing it well. I plan to keep this in mind during future projects, while also remembering the big picture, as you’ll read about in my next quote response.
"I have always had a soft spot in my heart for the details. I consider details more important than a great draft. Nothing works without details. Details are the essentials. The standard to measure quality by."
Designers need to have a talent for balancing the details with the big picture. You can’t have one without the other, but you also can’t have a lot of segregated information; they need to effectively combine if they are to lead to a product that users find “delightful.” I think of it like a puzzle; every micro-interaction is a puzzle piece, and if they are well designed, they combine to create a delightful puzzle.
In the reading, the author goes on to say, “Of course, the pitfall is that you can get lost in the microinteractions and not see the big picture, that all the details won’t fit together into a coherent whole when you’re finished.” Reading this passage reminded me of my Web Design 3 class when Maxim gave me feedback on a website I created. I had done “great with the small details” but lost sight of the big picture. Since then, I try to remember the big picture during projects, but I still struggle with having all the parts of a project–the research, ideation, design–align to result in an outcome. When I read through my case studies, I feel like my process is all over the place. I’m hoping with practice; I’ll get better at having all the “puzzle pieces” of my project fit together into a beautiful picture.
"Microinteractions are an exercise in restraint, in doing as much as possible with as little as possible."
Microinteractions are “micro,” yet the impact they have is macro. I like the idea of discovering users’ needs and putting a lot of time and effort into doing one small thing well, or “doing as much as possible with as little as possible.” It’s like life. In the end, the things we remember, the memories we hold closest to our hearts, aren’t the epic events–they are those little moments, a wink shared across a family dinner table, that night of random exploration wandering around a new town. I say that because one of my fondest memories of a family trip to Europe is a night in Switzerland. It was too hot to sleep, so my brother and I wandered around a small town. Nothing was open in the middle of the night, so we ended up returning to the hotel, and he taught me knife throwing using the butterfly knife we had just bought. Six months later, my dad received a $2000 bill from the hotel for a “damaged door” (aka, our knife-throwing target). At which point we confessed that, since it was illegal to fly with, we had also put the knife into my mom’s purse when we flew back to the states. Luckily I have fantastic parents, and they found the whole thing hilarious. Getting back to my point, life, design, interactions isn’t about the epic. It’s about the little things. And, if those little things are delightful, they become epic.
Quotes are from Chapter 1 of Microinteractions by Dan Saffer
"The details are not the details. They make the design.”
–Charles Eames