Designing Things For the People Who Use Them

Tim Harford wrote recently about the problems he had interpreting the instructions for a mail-order Covid test.¹  It was, he said, a matter of what behavioral economists call “the curse of knowledge,” i.e., “the difficulty a well-informed person has in fully appreciating the depth of someone else’s ignorance.” 

As Mr. Harford notes, “[a]nyone who has assembled a Lego set can attest that, with enough care, it is possible to provide clear instructions even for complex tasks.”  The problem is that too often people don’t take “enough care.”

An example of this, or perhaps a variation of “the curse of knowledge,” can be seen in the procedures that were initially set up for distributing Covid vaccine shots.  The problem was that the people setting up the system set it up for themselves: How would they want to register for a shot?  What would be the easiest way for them to get an appointment?  Because the people setting up the system were younger and/or more computer literate, or both, they set it all up to work digitally.  Which was fine for them.  That’s what they know and how they do things.  But what about their parents and grandparents, people who maybe aren’t online all the time?  People who didn’t grow up with computers and smartphones.  

When young people want an appointment with their doctor, they probably go online.  Older people pick up the phone.  In fact, younger people don’t go to the doctor all that often.  Older people do.  Younger people get answers to medical questions on the Internet.  Older people ask their doctor.  And that doesn’t even get into the differences between how richer people deal with doctors and medicine versus how poorer people do. 

Also, it wasn’t just a matter of how complicated the process was to get an appointment.  Once you8 got an appointment, you then had to get to where the shots were given.  Instead of bringing the shots to the people, the people setting up the system made people go to the shots.  Instead of having local drug stores and medical practices give the shots, like with flu shots, there were a small number of mass vaccination sites.  It worked okay for people who knew how to handle the system and who could get there.  For others, many of whom needed the shots the most, it didn’t work at all.

The whole process seemed rushed, though it shouldn’t have been.  People who were paying attention knew for months that vaccines were coming.  A better system could have been established with, in Mr. Harford’s words, “enough care.”  But it wasn’t done.  Instead of designing a system for all the different people who were going to be using it, those in charge set up a system for themselves.  We need to do better job, a much better job, next time.
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¹ Tim Harford, “The power of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes,” FT Weekend, September 4, 2021.