In my last post, I discussed ‘the labour illusion‘—the idea that transparency about the effort involved in a process can enhance our perception of its value. I think of it as the ‘cousin’ of the IKEA effect.
More intriguingly, this principle holds true even when the effort and delay is entirely unnecessary and fabricated. We assign greater trust, satisfaction, and value to processes that seem to take longer.
These entirely fabricated delays and indicators are examples of “benevolent deceptions” (full text pdf). They include familiar examples like “placebo buttons” in elevators and road crossings, tapping in to our action bias. This design pattern is also a common deception used in websites and apps.
Two great examples of this “artificial waiting” design pattern: TurboTax simulating a fake delay with a progress animation while “double-checking” you tax submission, and Facebook purposefully slowing down its security check interface to create the illusion of thoroughness. In reality both processes are nearly instantaneous, but users perceived them as untrustworthy until these artificial delays were added.
This phenomenon is similar to a story from Dan Ariely about how locksmiths get more tips if they take longer and appear to make a greater effort:
this locksmith was penalized for getting better at his profession. He was tipped better when he was an apprentice and it took him longer to pick a lock, even though he would often break the lock! Now that it takes him only a moment, his customers complain that he is overcharging and they don’t tip him. What this reveals is that consumers don’t value goods and services solely by their utility / benefit from the service, but also a sense of fairness relating to how much effort was exerted.
A Hacker News comment on Ariely’s video suggested that Coinstar’s coin-counting machines might use this design pattern by fabricating sounds and delays to increase trust in the final count.
It seems we’re hardwired to link (perceived) effort to trust and value.