Designing Resilience
Have you ever surfed the web with a bad internet connection? How was your experience? Did it really matter how nice the website design was when you struggled to load it?
The Communications of the ACM article, "Increasing Web Resilience" by Beck, Bentley, and Roskowski, highlights how web developers often assume consistent broadband and reliable server connections—creating a digital divide for those with limited access. The article introduces LiteLoad, a University of Tennessee research project aimed at reducing these assumptions in HTML, application sessions, and eventually web protocols to build a more resilient web. It raises an intriguing question for design: how good is somebody's mental bandwidth when they are interacting with our experiences? Do we assume we always have their full, undivided attention? Are we creating an experience divide?
We live in the real world full of distractions. We turn off our phones in order to focus. We work off hours in order to get things done. We get affected by arguments, family members who need our help, and our own emotional needs get in the way of the task at hand. This is familiar to us all, yet a foreign concept for many design teams creating work in a vacuum. Clients and colleagues pour over designs with magnifying glasses ensuring that everything is just so. But that isn't how those experiences unfold for our users. So how do we make sure we're not inadvertently creating a divide between those with full attention who get the artistry and value we create and the distracted take away a few broad strokes?
We design for a range of capacities. We shoot for the stars and create the aspirational designs that satisfy thoughtful consumption. But we also design the safety nets and support for those with just enough attention to get their jobs done. This gives us robust design systems that give users what they need.
Three takeaways from LiteLoad for resilient design
Design for real world constraints
LiteLoad addresses poor connectivity by focusing on low bandwidth and intermittent access—an approach experience design can mirror. Always consider user constraints like technical limits, accessibility, and environmental context that show up in the real world, but not always in the research lab and rarely in design reviews. Go a step further by assembling a list of real world constraints and using those as some of your review criteria.
Prioritize what matters most
LiteLoad simplifies by limiting object sizes and server connections, ensuring core functionality even with weak signals. In experience design, focus on essential content and actions. Streamline the journey to meet core needs, utilize progressive enhancement that honors the LiteLoad perspective that experiences that work even when people are "previously unconnected" and don't have full context.
Design for resilient recovery
LiteLoad ensures services degrade gracefully during disruptions, maintaining basic functionality. Similarly, experience design should anticipate errors and offer clear feedback, recovery paths, or support 'escape hatches'. Plan for things to go wrong, and design so users aren’t left stranded.
https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/connecting-the-unconnected/
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