You know that moment when you open an app and suddenly everything looks different? Well, that was me this morning with my bookkeeping software. New layout, new buttons, new everything, and not a single word of warning. I couldn't even find where the invoices were stored, and I needed to send one to a customer right away. Now, here's the irony. I love innovation. I teach people to adapt to change. But when change shows up unannounced, especially over and over and over, like it has been with my bookkeeping software lately, it triggers one thing. Confusion.

Now, let's contrast that with another app that I use regularly. That company sent me an email nearly two months in advance about their upcoming redesign. They even gave me a chance to switch early. And that little bit of urgency made all the difference. Because when it comes to change, the best design isn't faster. The best design is the one that's thoughtful. We're going to explore today how the speed and invisibility of technological change affects us and what companies and leaders can learn about designing for change. It's not a rant about my bookkeeping software.

In fact, I'm not even going to tell you the name of my bookkeeping software. But I'm down for that if anyone's game. If you want to go have drinks with me and dish about my bookkeeping software, I'm game for that. But instead, this episode is going to be a reflection on how even good products can create frustration with their users when design principles like visibility, consistency, and user control are ignored. And the same goes for your leadership. When visibility, consistency and user control are ignored. It's really challenging to follow the leader.

All right? And change itself is not the problem. It really isn't, because change is all around us. And you've heard me say change is inevitable. We can't stop change. But it's how change that gets introduced which helps us determine whether or not we're going to adopt it or abandon it or push back and be resistant to it. Now, to be fair, change is inconvenient. Change is inconvenient when it happens in our software, when it happens in our lives. Even for those of us who embrace change, it is still inconvenient.

And now that's why I don't always upgrade right away when a new version of something is introduced or announced. Like I was mentioning that software that I use, which is actually the interface of one of my personal email addresses, the interface was changing, and again, I was told about it two months in advance. I chose not to upgrade until I absolutely had to because I didn't have time to learn something new. And I often don't have time to learn something new because I got a lot on my plate. So I don't always upgrade right away. When a new version is introduced, I know it's going to take longer to complete whatever the task is, at least the first few times until I really learn it. Okay, so the problem with rapid change without explanation is what we're talking about today and this particular bookkeeping software. I kid you not, I think it's ever since AI came on the scene, their developers are going gung ho and they're adding all kinds of new features and they're changing the user interface to look really cool and I don't know where anything is.

So rapid change without designing for change and explaining to people that things are going to be changed. Well, that's the problem. So of course technology changes fast and that's necessary a lot of times. But the way that it gets rolled out often ignores user psychology, even with loyal customers like me. Now, to be fair, I might have left this company a while ago, but I knew it was going to be challenging to get my information out of that system and into a new system. So there is certainly something there about, you know, stagnation in a rapidly changing system because it's just more comfortable to not change. But even loyal customers like me can feel alienated if I'm not brought along for the ride. So this other company, that was the email company that was rolling out the change in my personal email, I got multiple emails from them over a two month period telling me that there was going to be change.

Now it was up to me to actually make that change or just wait until it was foisted upon me again. I waited another program that I use, which is my payroll software, they send me regular emails, I would say at least twice a month that says here's what's new in Gusto. And if you're interested in, if you need a payroll software, I highly recommend Gusto. In fact, we'll drop my referral link into the show notes for you if you need a payroll system. Again, I highly recommend Gusto. And you can get some money off if you use my code. All right, but that's sort of beside the point. But they're regularly letting me know that they're making changes to the interface.

And I just simply read that email and I get the heads up my bookkeeping tougher, you know, when they send me a bill, I mean, that was A little Freudian slip there, I was gonna say. You know, when they send me an email when my annual subscription is due for renewal, that is I think, the only time of year I hear from them, which is really excruciating given the number of times that they update. I mean, they'd have to be in my inbox practically every day because I honestly think that that software changes almost every night. Okay, now let's put a user experience thinking lens on this. So we're going to look at a few of those design heuristics that you've heard me talk about before. And these design heuristics, and again, if you're unfamiliar with the word heuristic, it just means principle. So these design principles really help us frame not only how users experience technology, but I also like to use this user experience framework and this user experience thinking to put a frame around how we interact with one another and especially how leaders can use this to create better leadership that's more fine tuned to their users, that would be their direct reports or the people in their organization or even the customers that they're serving.

All right, so the first one here that we're going to look at is visibility of the system status. So users should always be informed about what's going on. My bookkeeping software's unannounced interface changes totally violates this principle. And they violate this principle like literally on the weekly every time I log into that system, things look different. A simple what's new pop up on the screen or a rolling banner at the top of the interface could do the trick. Obviously an email to me could do the trick as well. Now to be fair, there have been times when I have logged in and it has said, hey, we've updated our look. If you want to roll back to the previous version, click here. Now, you know, when I hop into that system, I'm always in there to do one thing.

I need to print an invoice, I need to check a balance, I need to run a report and quick, quick, quick, quick, quick. So I'm always like, revert, revert, revert. I'm just in here to do some transaction. I don't have time to learn something new. I'm just here to do a transaction. So to be fair, they have done that sometimes, but not recently.

And this morning was like the worst. It was all different. Okay, so a simple what's new would help tremendously. Give me visibility into the system state. Now let's talk about leadership for just a moment. Let's say you're going to change something up. Let's say you're going to have instead of one on one meetings lasting an hour, you're going to change your meetings to 30 minutes. Because you've got a lot of direct reports and it's those one on ones is taking up a lot of time on your calendar. And if you've heard me talk about that before, you've heard me probably also say, leaders, you need more white space on your calendar.

So maybe you say, I'm going to take my one on ones from 60 minutes down to 30 minutes. Okay, great. But don't just spring that on your staff. Let them know in the current one on one, that's 60 minutes, hey, I'm looking to change some things around on my calendar. And so when you see, when you get back to your desk, you'll see updated meeting invitations from me and they're going to be for 30 minutes instead of 60 minutes. And we're going to try that and see how it goes. And I welcome your feedback along the way. Okay? That's giving visibility into the system state so that people can see the change coming and they have a much better time adapting to it along the way.

So for you as a leader, whether you're leading from the side or whether you're leading from a different place on the org chart where you have direct reports give visibility into the system state as much as you possibly can, it makes change so much easier for the people that you're leading. All right, so the second design heuristic that I want to talk about here is consistency and standards. So one of the things that was really irking me about my bookkeeping software is not only was invoices, not where I thought it was going to be or where it used to be, but they changed the names of the high level categories so that the thing that invoices was nested under was not even a thing that I was looking for. So the naming conventions and navigation changed and I had to relearn where things were. And that takes time. And you know, from what I just told you, I want to get in there, do the thing that I need and then get out. And, and so that. So the fact that I could not find what I was looking for because things had changed names and the navigation menus had changed, well, that put me in a space of not only cognitive overload, but also cognitive friction.

I mean, my head like hurt. I was like, oh, this is a puzzle. I'm not in it for a puzzle. I just need to send an invoice. Okay. And so that erodes efficiency. Certainly it took me a lot longer because it took me instead of just going like, oh, boop, boop, boop, and then finding a similar customer, it was repeat business with a customer that I worked with before. So I just needed to go in and, you know, duplicate a previous invoice, change the date of service, change the delivery program of the keynote that I gave them, or I should say was about to give them and because this was a paid in advance thing. And like all the things, it would just be bing, bada bing, bada bing. But no, there was a lot of cognitive load for me and a lot of friction. It did erode my efficiency for sure. And my confidence. Confidence in gosh. I mean, certainly confidence in the program and confidence in the company because I'm like, geez, they should be telling me to do this stuff, you know, that this is coming. Um, but it also creates some lack of confidence in myself.

I mean, I think I'm a pretty tech savvy person and the fact that I'm in my bookkeeping software and I can't figure out how to create an invoice. Well, nothing makes you feel less competent than when you can't find what you're looking for in a piece of software. That should be really straightforward. All right, so that was the second one. Consistency and standards. And then the third user experience heuristic is user control and freedom. So when changes happen automatically, overnight and you don't know they're coming, users lose autonomy.

Now there used to be autonomy when they said, hey, we've updated our look. Would you like to roll back to the old look or would you like to keep this new look? And if you want to keep this new look here, click here and we'll show you around. And it would have a little, you know, tutorial where they move things. Lately it hasn't even, doesn't even have that. So not only do I not have the ability to go back to what it used to look like, I don't even know it's coming. And again, that leaves me as the user feeling out of control and with no freedom. Now, offering a choice to switch early like my email provider did gives people agency and it reduces resistance. Even if I don't choose to upgrade to the new version early, I still feel a sense of freedom and a autonomy because I could if I wanted to. Now, you know, I probably don't want to because it's going to take time and I'm just going to push that thing down the road as long as possible.

Unless now, unless they're promising me some cool new features that are going to make my life easier. Now I might be invested in using that new feature set or using that new version sooner rather than later. And to be fair to my email provider, I don't think I thoroughly read or completely understood the impact of the upgrade. Because that new upgrade, man, I love it. It is so easy now to go through my personal email that comes to that address and just delete, delete, delete, or find all the ones that are, let's say from the same service provider that I don't need anymore and delete them anyway. It's, they just made it so much easier. And I won't say it's delightful because a lot of what I'm doing is removing myself from, from lists that I never signed up for or looking at my kids grades in school. You know, they're not like the most delightful tasks that I'm doing in my personal email.

Occasionally there's a message from a friend or a relative, but a lot of it is just the administrative, as I like to call it, of life that lands in my inbox, you know, bank statements and credit card and things like that. But again, it is a much more delightful interface now. And had I known that, I might have taken advantage of that and upgraded early. So either they didn't do enough, good enough job selling it, or I just either didn't read those emails closely or maybe I didn't read them at all. I was just like, okay, change is coming, push that down the road. That's probably what happened.

All right, now let's go back to this idea of the psychology of change again. Even if you like innovation and you like change, there is a certain inconvenience that comes along with change because you need to learn something new.

So as we think about human nature, people resist change not because they're stubborn, not because they don't like technology or innovation, but because unpredictability equals a loss of control. And that loss of control might be temporary until you learn how to do the things that you could do before in the new interface. So once I was able to find where to create invoices and produce one, now I had my control back. Now if only I can remember where that is, that will help me out tomorrow when I need to go send another invoice. But there is another, another heuristic that we didn't even talk about called recognition and recall. And I should be able to recognize and Recall exactly where in the system to go make that invoice after I've used it once to make an invoice. So, time will tell tomorrow when I go generate another invoice if I can easily find that. Again, that would be recognition and recall.

But again, going back to this psychology of change, when users feel informed and we feel like we're kept in the loop and like somebody's explained it to us well, then we're going to not just anticipate and look forward to, but even embrace the change. When we're surprised, however, we resist. Even if the new design is better now, as it goes for my bookkeeping software, the jury is still out. I do not know if the new design is better. I will have to learn that new design and God help them if they keep changing it while I'm trying to learn the new design. They probably will, because that has been the pattern for the last, like literally, I think since AI really came into the fold, I think their developers are just like cranking out all kinds of amazing features and things with AI and not taking into account the pace of change that their users can handle. All right, now let's talk about the takeaway here. We want to design things for emotional continuity.

So whether you're a leader or a software developer or a product designer, I want you to be thinking about not just new features, but about how people feel when they learn about the new features. We don't want to make people learn about the new features by surprise. We want people to have a heads up. We want them to see change coming when we can give them that level of input and insight. So remember that UX thinking isn't just about user interfaces. It's about designing experience and it's about designing change. And there is so much of that that you as an individual can do. For the people who you are leading now, think about your own users.

Those could be your employees. For those of you who are leading projects or leading on a place on the organizational chart where you have direct reports, they could be your clients or your customers. When you make a change, how do you communicate it? And are your users taken by surprise by it? Or do your users see it coming? Are you designing the experience of change or are you just designing the change itself? As this week unfolds, I want you to see where you can take on just one of these heuristics, one of these design elements, whether it's visibility into system status, whether it's consistency and standards, or whether it is user control and freedom. See if you can't find just one area where you can insert just a little bit of that in how you're rolling out change in how you're designing, change in how you're explaining change to others. That is my throwdown challenge for you, my friends, this week. And have an awesome week, and I'll be back here in your ears next week. Take good care of.