I used to think people were inherently lazy, and I may not have been 100% wrong but I was also not 100% right either.
The principle of least effort states that we will choose what will require the least amount of effort to achieve the desired results.
And this makes sense when you think about it from an evolutionary standpoint - as cavemen we would want to preserve our energy because we didn't know when we would hunt down our next meal so we would choose the times, effort and strategy that requires the least amount of effort.
But we're not cavemen anymore, food is not scarce and we don't spend days hunting. (and we barely get our 10,000 steps - which is an arbitrary number)
We still use this principle applied in different ways because things do not have to be hard all the time, lessons and friction need to exist, and yes the thrill of the chase with a mate requiring effort is exhilarating but we have found ways in modern day to use this - and fairly broadly.
Learning:
we don't have to sit and read a book for hours to learn, and why would we read the instructions when YouTube or TikTok will teach us how to change the gasket in our car, mend a broken zipper, understand simple biology, and grow a garden?
Even down to life, we are taught lessons from stories and anecdotal examples, life learnings from TV and podcasts.
We don't even need to go to the classroom, or work, we can do things from home, online without the effort of a commute and the planning that it requires to be away from home all day with lunches, kids and traffic.
Physical:
We don't have to work out, we can now take a pill of have minor surgery to suck the fat and nip and tuck the rest.
We can take a shot to make eating a challenge, staple our stomach making will power a thing of the past and this new forced reality the path of ease and adjustment.
We not longer have to 'do the work', we can use AI, the internet, and dictation to type, we can Google anything.
How we use this:
This is not all bad, this is good but we need to understand how to work with this, we cant write websites full of text, we can write snippets and allow the reader to choose to 'read more', and balance with visuals to enhance ease of cognition.
We can design for people not for aesthetics. Desire paths happen because we design for how we want things to look rather than how humans want to use them.
If we focus on what we want people to do, their actions, choices and what end results we would prefer and design to make that the path of least resistance we can design with consideration for the principle of least effort.
Lets talk about how to make things easier and more effective for your clients.
Julie Boake
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