Don’t let poor design spoil your customers’ experience—discover why good design can be the key to keeping the suspense alive.
If you’re a fan of any TV show, live game, or awards show, you know that finding out the ending before watching it is the ultimate letdown. Take sports fans during the playoffs season, and you’ll see the lengths they’ll go to avoid spoilers. I have friends who are so serious about staying spoiler-free that they’ll turn off their phones, stay away from TVs, and avoid talking to anyone until they get to watch it themselves.
While you can try to avoid spoilers as much as possible, you’ll need to tune in eventually.
Like many of our favourite events, live sports used to be exclusively available on cable or network television, but today, more and more games are being broadcast digitally. DAZN, NHL Live, NBA League Pass, and NFL Sunday Ticket, all have direct-to-consumer digital channels that allow users to stream live sports as well as watch the previous day’s recorded games.
Image source: www.nhl.com
The duration dilemma
Watching a past game is a great way to catch up on all the action at your own convenience. You can fast forward through the boring parts and relive the most exciting moments as if you were watching live.
But here’s the catch—when you’re watching a past game, you want the score to be a surprise. You want to experience the thrill of each play and the suspense of not knowing what’s going to happen next.
Unfortunately, most videos come with a duration time. If you see that a hockey game is listed as 3 hours and 30 minutes, you’ll instantly know that the game went into overtime. You might not know who won, but you’ll know it was a one-goal game.
Image source: www.nhl.com
The art of withholding
Normally, hiding the duration of a video would be counter-intuitive, as it’s something that viewers would typically want to know. But in some cases, exposing the duration can reveal something that fundamentally ruins the user experience.
This is particularly true when it comes to spoilers. If a customer sees that a video is only 20 minutes long, they might assume that nothing exciting happens and skip it altogether. But if they see that a video is three hours long, they’ll know that it’s going to be a close game, and the suspense is ruined. That’s why it’s important to put yourself in the customer’s shoes and design your system with their end experience in mind.
Designing for user experience requires more than just technical proficiency—it demands a customer-centric approach that anticipates and exceeds their expectations. By keeping your customers at the heart of the design process, you can create a system that drives loyalty and gives you a meaningful edge over your competitors.
Thanks for reading! For more customer-first web design tips, check out more of our Website Nightmares here.
