Do Make Me Think

2020 marks 20 years since Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think ushered in two decades of 'Easy'. The next decade is one in which meeting more than our dumb desire for instant gratification will need to be taken much more seriously.

Easy has been a mantra across web design, UX, c

Work it out for yourself...

ustomer experience, communications strategy and alarmingly, media and political propaganda.

The drive for easy should now be tempered with the need we all have to apply more critical thinking.

Easy underestimates human complexity. It dumbs down. And in so doing it reduces our engagement. In our desire to make so much so frictionless, we have unwittingly shifted consumers (and citizens) toward consumption (and passive acceptance) when the promise at the start of the decade was for ever greater participation - with all the value generation of co-creation and collaboration through communities of purpose - people caring enough to act.

Human needs include and demand much more than instant gratification. Challenge, inspiration, judgment, justice - all these contribute to the self-actualisation through which we derive our meaning.

If the last two decades have all been about easy, the next must build on the benefits that has delivered (essentially making technology invisible - an enabler rather than an end in itself).

Easy has become table stakes.

To win in the next decade will be to understand and respond to more complex needs -unearthed through quality human insight. Businesses will have to deliver against those needs in rapidly shifting contexts - managing the ambiguity that inevitably produces - at speed.

And they will need to do it with products and services which challenge, inspire and encourage participation; whether that be to save the planet, improve the lives of millions or the health of the individuals engaged.

It's time to make them think.