Product Deepdive: The Art of Balancing Detail and Accessibility
There’s a line in the sand we all draw when it comes to big blocks of information. A point at which we decide it’s worth not reading that detailed chunk of text and worth risking the wrath of proceeding uninformed.
The longer the task, the more we tend to shift the responsibility from ourselves to the informing party to ensure we walk away from information flows unscathed.
“Careful: Steep ledge” - That’s my fault if I fall off.
A Tolkein-like terms and conditions doc? - If you’re going to sell my soul you’re going to have to specifically point that bit out, mate.
In regulatory and compliance products, this problem is pretty much all we obsess about. How do we make sure someone understands what we need from them, without sending them to sleep? How do we make them commit to the process long enough to be informed, when the information is dull and technical?
We work with a regulation called BS:7858, which is 28 terrifying pages of compliance language that’s only just scraping the surface of how we need to adhere to the regulations of background checking. UK security vetting has an additional layer to this problem, in that our audience often speaks English as an additional language, and can occasionally have a limited grasp on tech. I’ve been iterating on this for a few years now, and have a couple of learnings to share.
Leverage the Shared Experience
Letting users know that other people are going through the flow too can reduce that feeling of ‘surely I’m the only one in the world struggling with this’, and also foster a sense of accountability- ‘if they’re doing it, then I should too’. By indicating to your users that they are not the first or only person to have gone through your process, they will trust it more.
Set Time Expectations
We give our users a very condensed walk-through of the important points, but there’s still risk of them wondering why we’re providing so much information, seeing it as too much work, and dropping out.
By giving users an expectation of how much time we need them to commit, we’re setting expectations and allowing a more informed decision making process. Empowering the user to understand when they can best fit their background check around their life makes them more likely to commit to using that time.
Allow Users to Get Things Wrong
Like I said earlier, we’ve shifted the responsibility of keeping the user on the right path onto ourselves due to the sheer amount of context needed. This is freeing, it means we don’t need to train users up to get it all right the first time round.
We provide a far more valuable and bespoke journey if we allow the user to fail and tell them why. ‘Perfection is the enemy of progress’, and this rings true when we let users get things wrong while they have a desire to move through the process. We can break their mistakes down into broader sections and give more specific feedback this way.
Provide Two or More Journeys
Why choose between providing lots of information and providing a simple journey? By asking users ‘have you done this before?’, you’re asking what level of support they want and gaining buy-in that they will use that support. It’s a pain to provide multiple journeys, but a great source of A/B testing to determine what the lower and upper thresholds of support are.
Experiment with Engaging Ways to Access Support
There’s been a cultural shift in software aimed at gen-z and millenials in recent years, where it’s more comfortable moving away from being professional and choosing to engage you through being playful. I’ve seen UX interactions such as ‘fist bumps’ to build virtual rapport and commitment, or spinning a wheel to gain another attempt at a game.
Ultimately like all things product, it’s a case of experimenting with trade-offs. It’s also worth remembering that so many external factors influence how bought in a user is to their journey.
When all fails within your zone of influence, don’t be afraid to look outwards and double check that for users, the juice is worth the squeeze.
