Look at this picture, it's a path I sometimes walk through. Even though there’s a sidewalk right next to it, people have made their own dirt path. The sidewalk follows a longer and less direct route, but the dirt path feels quicker and straightforward.
It’s the same with digital products. No matter how you design and plan the flows, users find shortcuts if the official path feels longer or harder.
Let me give a YouTube example. If you don’t have a YouTube Premium subscription, you can’t officially run videos in the background. What I do instead is share the video link to WhatsApp, wait for it to load, send it, and then play it inside WhatsApp. That way the video runs in the background while I’m using other apps. I do this all the time when I want to listen to podcasts.
Another example is Google Maps. Living in Istanbul, I noticed that for most destinations, Google Maps would suggest a route that included both a bus and a metro to get somewhere. But most of the time, users (like me) could skip one of these options with a short walk, instead of following the recommended route. Later on, Google Maps improved this by showing multiple route options, likely to give users all possible choices.
When users take shortcuts or find their own way, they might not break anything, they’re just finding the quickest solution to their problem. To address such cases as a designer, it's important to understand and pay attention to user behaviors.
It’s the same with digital products. No matter how you design and plan the flows, users find shortcuts if the official path feels longer or harder.
Let me give a YouTube example. If you don’t have a YouTube Premium subscription, you can’t officially run videos in the background. What I do instead is share the video link to WhatsApp, wait for it to load, send it, and then play it inside WhatsApp. That way the video runs in the background while I’m using other apps. I do this all the time when I want to listen to podcasts.
Another example is Google Maps. Living in Istanbul, I noticed that for most destinations, Google Maps would suggest a route that included both a bus and a metro to get somewhere. But most of the time, users (like me) could skip one of these options with a short walk, instead of following the recommended route. Later on, Google Maps improved this by showing multiple route options, likely to give users all possible choices.
When users take shortcuts or find their own way, they might not break anything, they’re just finding the quickest solution to their problem. To address such cases as a designer, it's important to understand and pay attention to user behaviors.
