When fintech bank N26 made its login process incredibly fast, users felt it was unsafe. To build trust, the product team had to artificially slow the login down and add visual cues, like a lock animation, demonstrating that sometimes perceived security is more valuable than raw speed.
Related Insights
Even with comparable model quality, user experience details create significant product stickiness for LLMs. Google's Gemini feels much slower than ChatGPT, and ChatGPT's mobile app includes satisfying haptic feedback. This superior, faster-feeling UX is a key differentiator that causes users to churn back from competitors.
The obsession with removing friction is often wrong. When users have low intent or understanding, the goal isn't to speed them up but to build their comprehension of your product's value. If software asks you to make a decision you don't understand, it makes you feel stupid, which is the ultimate failure.
Customers often rate a service higher if they believe significant effort was expended—a concept called the "illusion of effort." Even if a faster, automated process yields the same result, framing the delivery around the effort invested in creating the system can boost perceived quality.
Counterintuitively, AI responses that are too fast can be perceived as low-quality or pre-scripted, harming user trust. There is a sweet spot for response time; a slight, human-like delay can signal that the AI is actually "thinking" and generating a considered answer.
Unlike past tech waves where security was a trade-off against speed, with AI it's the foundation of adoption. If users don't trust an AI system to be safe and secure, they won't use it, rendering it unproductive by default. Therefore, trust enables productivity.
Metropolis's computer vision system was so frictionless that users often didn't notice it was working. This counter-intuitive problem forced them to add friction, like text notifications, back into the experience to confirm the product was delivering value and build brand awareness.
Platforms designed for frictionless speed prevent users from taking a "trust pause"—a moment to critically assess if a person, product, or piece of information is worthy of trust. By removing this reflective step in the name of efficiency, technology accelerates poor decision-making and makes users more vulnerable to misinformation.
Faced with a necessary multi-second delay during the device's boot-up and network connection process, the team designed a modular animation of the mascot character, Mushka. This creative solution masked the technical latency, turning a potential user frustration into a charming and memorable brand interaction.
Consumers equate effort with quality and devalue work perceived as instant, like AI output. To combat this 'labor illusion,' stress the human expertise, years of research, or complex system development that enables the AI. Focus on the effort invested in the process, not just the speed of the result.
The success of services like Uber isn't just about saving time; it's about the *perception* of convenience and control. A user might wait longer for an Uber than it would take to hail a cab, but the feeling of control from ordering on an app is so powerful that it overrides the actual loss of time. This psychological element is key.
