Computer voice
season two episode 17.

Per Axbom
Journalists, of course starting calling up and wanting to interview all these presidential candidates. And as it turns out, a lot of these people had no idea that they were candidates for president of Iceland, which is just amazing. Imagine getting that call.

[Music]

James Royal-Lawson
I’m James.

Per Axbom
And I’m Per.

James Royal-Lawson
And this is UX podcast, balancing Business Technology, people and society since 2011. And we’ve listeners, new and old all over the world from Greenland to Iceland.

Per Axbom
Oh, nice one you picked Iceland.

James Royal-Lawson
See, people don’t know why that’s nice one yet? Exactly. We’re going to get to it. Because today is a link show.

Per Axbom
Yay. We haven’t had one in a while.

James Royal-Lawson
No, it’s been since before before Christmas we had one I believe. So a little while. And in the link show, we bring you two articles that Per and I have discovered or been served by an algorithm in some medium or other that has caught our interest and that we want to share with you, and talk to you about and the two of them today. The First one is going to be the lazy load, endless scroll and colour slicing have to go, which is an article by Bethany Sadler-Jasmin.

Per Axbom
And the second article today is, how do you accidentally run for president of Iceland? There we go. There’s why Iceland is fun. And this one is by Anna Andersen. Start us off James.

James Royal-Lawson
So the first article for us to chat about today is the lazy load, endless scroll and colour slicing have to go. This is written by Bethany Sadler-Jasmine, who is the global UX designer. Oh, a global UX design lead, solopreneur, burnout coach and founder of rebel soul digital.com. And this one, well, like so many things we have to work with, this article is about balance, I think you could say.

Balance between sufficient choice and feeling comfortable making decisions. And Bethany, she does this in the article in the context of E commerce and E commerce websites. So to quote a little bit from the beginning, ‘Today’s e commerce experience has more products to scroll through than one would ever imagine looking through in a brick and mortar store. Adding lazy loads and colour sliced products demands users to rely heavily on their working memory to decide what to buy or remember what they’ve already looked at in a list of hundreds of items.

Many users become so overwhelmed, they exit the site. So, the subtitle of this article is ‘Hicks law is going out the window especially for neurodivergent users.’ Now, Hicks law for any of us that need a little reminder about which law that is because of course in the world of UX and digital design, we have hundreds of laws that we need to remember and follow all the time. Interesting that’s a kind of this similarity with the amount of – that’s a very long list that we need to filter and sort out.

Per Axbom
Beeton’s law would be that we have too many laws.

James Royal-Lawson
Could we have not Beeton’s law, you’ve got me going now. Hicks law. That’s the one which says the more choices you present your users with or people with I guess, the longer or even more challenging it is, the more cognitively challenging it is for for them to reach a decision. They can get paralysed by choice, I guess is another way you could describe that. If you’re shown too many choices, hicks law itself is an exponential graph that with every additional choice it becomes more difficult to make a decision.

Per Axbom
So which leads to decision fatigue, which is the enemy of UX.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. And things like decision fatigue and well if you’re already trying to live your life and Bethany writes this in the beginning of the article is if you’re trying to balance things like you know tasks at home, supporting the members of your family, or even, you know, investing time you need into your work to get promoted or find a job, read the news, doing the shopping, you’re constantly, basically in a chronic state of information overload. There’s too much going on, we’re having to juggle so much.

Per Axbom
She does address a lot of factors related to equity, inclusion and accessibility in this article, which I really appreciate as well.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, no, it’s really nice that she brings up a lot of these aspects and she herself, after being burnt out, as far as I understand, it works herself with coaching people about avoiding burnout, or finding a way out from falling into burnout again, once you’ve been burned. And we do have that opportunity to influence these things, so that they aren’t overwhelming people. And I mean, I know you’ve done talks about this, and we’ve talked about on the show many many times, but we often find ourselves in situations in organisations where, that’s a big ask.

We struggle with the organisation to get them to buy into what we’re suggesting when it isn’t the kind of, what seems on the surface the click maximising goal-hitting, even conversion-maximising option because some of these things might be ones that don’t immediately increase conversion, really. I mean, it’s, before I get into some of the details of the article, there’s a lot of hypotheses baked into this article about ways that maybe you should do it instead. But there’s a fair bit of, of data and, and stuff backing up the suggestions too.

That’s me kind of like putting in a disclaimer, saying in your organisation, you might have arguments about whether these things that we’re seeing, or Beth is saying, is true or not. But let’s get on to a couple of the things that she specifically highlights. One of them is colour slicing.

Per Axbom
I actually had never heard of colour slicing before, I didn’t know it was called that.

James Royal-Lawson
No, I didn’t realise colour slicing was colour slicing. But anyway, what Bethany means by colour slicing is this device, idea in which you present multiple versions of this effectively the same item that’s in product, in different colours, to inflate your your inventory or make you, it’s the classic thing of making yourself look big, like a cat kind of been attacked or whatever. And you make yourself look big by having lots of variations and you’d have 15 T shirts, which is the same T shirt, but you’re you’ve got a red t shirt, a green t shirt, a blue t shirt.

Per Axbom
Those all appear as separate items as you’re scrolling down the page.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, yeah. As opposed to the opposite, not opposite necessarily, but the alternative way of dealing that might be that you would present the variations as product options when you’re on the product page. So you would have a generic t shirt product, which maybe show different colours there at that point, maybe not, I don’t know. But then when you actually go to the product page, then you can have on a clothes shop, you would have maybe little squares underneath that you could click on to see different variations or colours and so on.

Per Axbom
One thing I actually noticed or thought about as I was reading this was, of course, I’ve also been subjected to what I now know is called colour slicing. And it would make sense to me, if all those items were placed next to each other. So here comes the t shirt, and here are the variations of that T shirt as I’m scrolling down, placed next to that original item. What tends to happen is the same product, the same type of clothing is in different colours is appearing at different places as I scroll down, so it doesn’t even make sense. I don’t even know it’s connected to that other one is the same product, just a different colour.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, and I think that’s a good point there, about the thing about making sense. A lot of these things may not make sense to the people who are at the other end of it, because when you’re dealing with humans and the diversity of humans that we have, then there’s a lot of sense-making has to be done to look through these lists. Baymard research who, an excellent resource for numerous things to deal with, especially e commerce, in their testing they’ve done, they’ve seen that users become overwhelmed with a number of variations of products when they’re listed as separate items. So their advice is actually you don’t do it like that.

Well Bethany hooks us on is something called the gold radiant effect. Just effects laws, they’re all kind of the same thing, are they? Well, this one the gold radiant effect, this is where we need to feel a goal is achievable. So when faced with these kinds of very long, but very similar kind of hard to take in lists of products and their variations, you have that feeling of helplessness ready from the start, you’ve kind of been overwhelmed already from the product listing point. So you don’t feel like it’s going to be possible for you to make a choice, because you just don’t know how to manage this infinite amount of choice that you’ve been presented with.

Per Axbom
Right?

James Royal-Lawson
So, yeah, so boiling down, the things can be a really big ask. And you’ve already mentioned, Bethany brings up the accessibility aspect of this, and even the wellness side of it. And I think it’s really nice that she highlights this, because we always try to highlight the accessibility side of things. It’s not easy, the complexity of even, so if you do have this, filters, we might do some filtering.

But designing filters well, or even using filters to whittle things down to a manageable number, that can be challenging to get right. It can also be challenging to use. And if you are the neurodiverse or you are in need of assistive technology, or try using a keyboard or try using a screen reader to whittle some of these choices down using filters.

Per Axbom
So, honestly, James, just yesterday I was in my tool for sending out newsletters, and I was trying to find a person’s email address. And I was searching but there was a filter on that it didn’t notice until like, I was getting frustrated, why can’t I find this person. But there was another filter on for for another list. And so I couldn’t find that person because they were not in that list that that the filter. So I was like yes, I stumbled upon these things constantly, where I am stuck in a filter that I hadn’t realised was on.

James Royal-Lawson
Well, we’ll actually come to after I’ve gone through one more thing that Bethany talks about. She does have some recommendations herself about what we could do to improve all this. But I’ll move on to another one of the things she mentions. And that’s the the whole thing with infinite scroll, Doom scrolling, endless scroll. Beth herself uses the phrase Lazy Load bit in this article, but we have we have many phrases for this thing. And this is this is that thing where you scroll, and something else appears, you scroll, something else appears, you scroll and something else appears, you scroll and something else appears, you scroll up, ok.

Per Axbom
Sometimes there’s a loader, sometimes it just happens instantly. It can be different but you’re like what’s happening and then all of a sudden there’s like 10 new items on the page.

James Royal-Lawson
Well, no I mean, this this in particular she’s talking about is the is the infinite one where no interaction is required.

Per Axbom
Because your not, you’re not even noticing it you’re not even noticing that things are loading.

James Royal-Lawson
But effectively, or you you just keep on going so you’ve got no anchorage, you’ve got no way of you can lose context of where you are or where you were, it can be difficult to go back to somewhere where you where you once were, or wherever Oh, yeah, that like that. 110 items back, but it always gets very spacially to to manage. And it’s, it’s something. Doom scrolling is something that research is highlighting.

Every now and then now we’re seeing articles and papers come out, that talk about the impact of doom scrolling, infinite scroll on mental health, we’ve generally seen it in connection with social media, and children or youths, younger people on social media that you know, with things like tick tock Instagram, so on that it’s your it keeps on going. It never ever stops.

And that is a problem. even bigger problem for younger people because of their inability to limit themselves and to monitor. I mean, this these aspects that you aren’t mature enough when you’re younger to realise what you’re doing, was that there was actually this – Scott brought it up again by paper I think last month. I can link to it in the show notes by the American Phsychologists Association I think it was. I read about complaining yet again, or highlighting the problem with Doom scrolling. Some of these things you can guess why they seem like good ideas.

Per Axbom
It’s easier to build one page with everything and you just stuff it all in there. So it’s like it’s almost like having a one rack in your store and it’s never ending, and you just browse one rack and you figure out well, there was one item back that I really liked but how do I find it again? No idea.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, I mean, the whole thing of like when we’ve got you here, we’ll just keep on feeding you – you’re scared of the cost of that extra interaction. As you say, we like friction. I mean, if you can put anything in the way, it’s seen as a scary thing for a lot of companies. We’ve got them here. Now, we don’t want to lose them.

Per Axbom
I keep hearing this, and I heard this actually the other day, we have to reduce the number of clicks. And when you have someone in a senior position, saying, you need to reduce the number of clicks, that is what you’ve done with infinite scroll, because now you don’t have to click anymore. So, goal met.

James Royal-Lawson
In a certain narrow context, that might seem like a good idea. And you might be able to run A/B testing or experiments that prove that it works better, depending on what you’ve set your goal as. But we do have the data and evidence out there that doom scrolling is not great for your health. And you’ve got to ask yourself, do you want to contribute to the mental unwell being of your customers, or even lose certain customers because you’ve offered them no guardrails when it comes to browsing your products.

Designing a better solution, Beth has three concrete bits of advice that she gives to improve the balance of your product listings, I guess, or how the well being that you generate from your product listings. One of them was just cut down your product list.

Per Axbom
I love that.

James Royal-Lawson
I like that too. This is just not kind of like, well you’d have to argue with marketing probably about this one, but you know, have less products.

Per Axbom
It made me think of when I go to limp lunch restaurants, I so appreciate lunch restaurants that have like five items, rather than ones that have 50.

James Royal-Lawson
Shouldn’t it be three, didn’t we learn that three is the magic number for these things. Adding in my own little one here is, because it is going to be a battle to get the products cut down. Because if you’re in an organisation that is selling products, then to get that number reduced is going to involve touching on so many aspects of your organisation, probably.

So that’s a kind of heavy lift to go in there and dismantle product ranges, and so on. So it might not be something you can do immediately or do quickly. So we can work with better filtering. And this generally is something which is promoted by people as a good thing. If you do have a large number of products then offer some simple way of quickly reducing that to something more manageable.

Without going into kind of nitty gritty details of how you build filters, you’d want to reduce the number down. Sure, you might get into arguments still about ‘oh, if we’ve given them too little choice, they won’t understand any more that we have more available. Now trust your users, if you’ve tested this and built it well to offer them helpful choices to narrow things down, then you will be respecting their decisions. And you’ll be something with more relevance.

Per Axbom
It’s almost like I would want this message. Hello, we have 500 items. How can we reduce that for you? And ask the questions to help me reduce it. Because something especially when I’m looking for clothes online, I realise that I have to click in on items to realise that, well, it’s not available in my size. Why can’t I just select my size and just show the items that are available in my size?

I mean, it’s so simple, but I see that in very few stores. This actually got me thinking about so many different ways to just cut down the product list. It even made me think just reduce it randomly. I just want 10 items. And that’s enough for me, please.

James Royal-Lawson
Well, you’re right, that power by just when it comes to clothing. I mean, you rarely see a website that goes kind of like from the beginning. Now, what size are you. You might even have to present that in the right way. So you don’t straight away scare people thinking, oh, yeah, but I don’t know what colour I want. You might be buying for a friend and so on. So yes, I get it, it might be best to leave the options open.

Per Axbom
It’s not like you have to go through. It’s something that allows you to reduce the numbers, but some people say that, remembering what you said at the start, absolutely, there will be some people that do want it this way, they want to be able to scroll because that’s how they’re accustomed to it and they just like it.

James Royal-Lawson
And Bethany makes that point that there are people who are going to like Option A or Option B. You know, one size does not fit all. But yeah. And balancing – we have to balance. Strategic product slicing was something else that Bethany mentioned. And this is a key thing – with the User in mind. Always when we get advice, things like strategic product slicing and then when you have to point out with the user in mind.

It’s amazing that we’re still having to write that kind of thing, in 2024. But I know exactly what she means, because often its marketing in mind, or it’s the inside out. It’s how your organisation is structured that drives product slicing, rather than what is needed or wanted at the other end, the other side, or even what your competitors are doing is what’s driving it rather than you offering something more useful.

Per Axbom
Exactly. Another thing, check your notes as well which means should not need reminding of either is people want to know where they are, where am I? Where am I within this large dataset that you are presenting to me. That is what we need to help people with at all times.

James Royal-Lawson
And instructure. We know that from an accessibility point of view, then you need to have things like breadcrumbs, clear navigation, and showing where you are. So yeah.

Per Axbom
We have multi step forms and we know that they’re good, because they allow people to understand when am I done.

James Royal-Lawson
Third bit of advice, that we’ve already touched on a little bit about is using, ‘load more’ or pagination. Now, there are effectively three ways that you deal with these kind of product listings. One of them is your infinite scroll, which listeners will already have gathered that we’re not big fans of that. But I will, now, come in with a place where I think it can be okay. It’s when you’ve got and this kind of amusingly, infinite scroll, I think works, if there aren’t an infinite amount of items.

So you’ve got a relatively small and finite number of items, then it might improve the performance of the page, that you don’t load them all at once. So you actually scroll, and then you’d allow maybe, I don’t know, I’m gonna just pick 20/30, or whatever. So you’ve got a kind of quite a small number, then it may be Okay to allow it to load automatically when you scroll down. But generally, when you’re dealing with products

Per Axbom
Endless James.

James Royal-Lawson
That’s why I said it was amusingly, it’s the the endless scroll. The best application of it is, when it’s not endless. It’s actually just a staggered scroll. But when you’re talking about hundreds of items, you know, big and inventories of stuff, then you’ve got your ‘Load more’ option, which you mentioned, when you’ve got to click on a button to load more. That’s that’s actually a much better solution on mobile.

Because you’ve paused, you’ve come to a point and then you’ve asked the user, okay, right. We’re in this together, should we should we carry on for another 50? And they go, Yeah, okay. Click the button, you go on. So you’re partnering up with the user? And you’ve given them a choice, and you’re respecting the choice, and you’re moving onwards. And if they don’t want to do it anymore, they don’t click the button.

Per Axbom
Oh, and what I loved about you saying that, let’s load another 50, it made me immediately think, Well, why don’t I have three buttons? Load 10, load 20, load 50. And just give me more control? ,

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, you could do that. But works on mobile, but you’re not as maybe good on desktop, I think on desktop, then pagination, the old tried and tested thing is actually quite a good one to use. That said, Google is not using it just now. They kind of come and gone. Sometimes they have pagination and sometimes don’t. And just now for me, it’s infinite scroll.

Per Axbom
I’m very confused about Google and what they’re doing.

James Royal-Lawson
Oh that’s another podcast.

Per Axbom
Fantastic. Let’s move on to Iceland. Okay, so this is, of course, it starts out humorous. But when when you start diving deeper, you realise Well, what is this giving an example of really? So this article is written by Anna Anderson, and she’s a creative collaborative Content Designer. Lots of experience of writing and editing, but he’s also an Icelandic to English translator. And when I visited her website, I found out she once knitted a sweater. And I love these little tidbits of information that people provide on their websites.

James Royal-Lawson
Only once?

Per Axbom
I think only once actually, that’s how she put it.

James Royal-Lawson
That’s even more interesting because like what was so dramatic about knitting it that caused her do it once.

Per Axbom
She did that on Iceland as well. You’ll want to visit Anna anderson.com for for more of those stories, but we are today looking at one of her most recent articles. How do you accidentally run for president of Iceland? So framing this, Iceland is a Country and island with just under 400,000 people. So that is the entirety of the population of this country. And to run for president of Iceland, you need to be an Icelandic citizen, at least 35 years old and have 1500 endorsements. And the thing that is new this year, is that they are putting this online, the application for a candidating as the president of Iceland.

James Royal-Lawson
Registering your intention to run?

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, candidacy.

Per Axbom
Yeah, exactly. So instead of collecting all those signatures on paper, the old fashioned way, people are just going to a website, and a web address, and they’re submitting. Well, you’re applying, how did you put it?

James Royal-Lawson
You’re putting forward candidacy, right? You’re saying like that I’d like to run? Please endorse me so I can run.

Per Axbom
So I’m on there, and of course, I need my 1500 endorsements. So I’m on social media. And of course, I’m posting this link as well, telling people, please go there and endorse me. Now, the interesting thing that is happening this year is that usually there are about nine candidates on the ballot. And this year to date when she wrote this article, I forgot the date of it,

James Royal-Lawson
82 it says –

Per Axbom
Yeah, but –

James Royal-Lawson
In April, end of April. And I just want to point out, Per, is that the the period for applying to stand has now ended because they’re actually having the vote in a couple of weeks.

Per Axbom
Yeah, exactly.

James Royal-Lawson
Just in case anyone wanted – all the all the Icelandic people listening would be rushing out there to register.

Per Axbom
But when she wrote this, 82 people were collecting endorsements. And, as she wrote, “…including a comedian, a model, the world’s first double-arm transplant receiver, and my aunt Helga.”

James Royal-Lawson
Oh Excellent,

Per Axbom
Yes. And that the aunt Helga is not a mistake. But it turns out, journalists, of course, starting calling up and wanting to interview all these presidential candidates. And as it turns out, a lot of these people had no idea that they were candidating for president of Iceland, which is just amazing, Imagine getting that call. So how does this happen? So it turns out the page where you, as well apply to be a candidate, and also supply your endorsement for a candidate is the same webpage. So just there, you will kind of realise, well, hang on, how did that happen? 
And to top it off, there’s actually at the top of that page, there is a login button. That is when you want to submit your candidacy. But then you have to scroll down below that to see a list of the candidates that you want to endorse, where you just go and endorse the candidate that you want. And what seems to be happening is that what did happen is that a lot of people just, they got the link from a candidate to endorse them. They went there and saw the big blue login button, they clicked that and when they logged in with their national digital ID for Iceland, apparently, they now submitted their candidacy. So a lot of people have been doing this. Just unknowingly.

James Royal-Lawson
Hold on, hold on, Per. So right, we’ve got a pause a little bit here. So we’ve got a webpage on a government website, to do with an election. And, it’s got multiple, primary goals, I guess, with this page, depending on which target audience or which group of users that will be coming to this page are. And the way this page is presented, makes it next to impossible for me to understand the context from my perspective.

Per Axbom
RIght, because you have to imagine that you’re seeing someone you know, perhaps, saying on social media, please click this link and endorse me. And you go there, the main thing you see is a login button and you assume, well, I’m gonna press the login button to endorse the person who just asked me to endorse them. I mean, it’s, it’s quite simple, really.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, there’s actually a screenshot on the article of the the original webpage in English. I think, I’ve had a little look at the Icelandic government website, and they do have a lot of information in English. So I guess there was an English version of the page. So maybe the Icelandic wording for some of this stuff was not exactly the same as English or even worse.

Per Axbom
Yeah.

James Royal-Lawson
Obviously, because I guess most of the people that registered by accident well, they must have been Icelandic because that’s a requirement of running, and I’m gonna guess that a lot of them spoke Icelandic and were reading the Icelandic version.

Per Axbom
Yeah. So of course, after all these journalists call these people up and they say, Well, hang on I’m not I’m not candidating as president. So obviously they realised they had to change the webpage so digitalized and quickly redesigned the page, they created a separate one for registering to collect endorsements.

James Royal-Lawson
Who’d have thought.

Per Axbom
It seems so simple, they kept the link at the bottom of the page. So they switched around, of course. So if you get a link to the page to endorse people, there’s a list of candidates to endorse but at the very bottom, if you want to collect endorsements, you click that. And interestingly, I almost missed this, the first time I read this article is that since these changes were made, the list of candidates has continued to grow. So this did not stop everything. It just probably made the trickle inflow of candidates a bit smaller.

James Royal-Lawson
You’ve got the whole thing where the amount of media attention this receives, became a lesson in democracy, that many people wouldn’t have realised that it was open to any citizen to register. And now you didn’t have to do loads of forms and go to some kind of office to register or whatever, you could do it online. So a combination of things here meant that it was democratically open, and they’d fix the usability, it was more clear of what you did when.

James Royal-Lawson
But absolutely fascinating that I mean, you ask yourself, how could this happen? You know, that’s something that Anna can’t answer from her article. I tried to do a little bit of hunting to see if I could find anything more of a reveal about the process up to the first version, I couldn’t find anything. But, I’ve been one who’s quite happy to speculate.

Per Axbom
Go for it, James.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, well, thinking about how sometimes it can be. I mean, we’re working in teams and sometimes you’re working with engineers or developers, and maybe they have very little interest in the actual end product. Sometimes they’re not going to worry or question what they’re going to build, they’re just going to follow the card, story, whatever, it’s kind of like, the backlog.

Per Axbom
There’s a required specification of some sort.

James Royal-Lawson
It’s formed in some way, in some tool, they’ve got a thing, and they need to make this thing and it needs to be delivered during this round of development. And, you know, if that thing says, register to be a candidate, that might be the driving force. So they’ve not really thought about it. And other things are getting added as b. tasks, even though the main task was registering to be a candidate, because that is a story that had to be – that is a flow, a journey that has to be catered for.

Per Axbom
And there’s even a case where people could argue well, it’s much easier if all we have to do is communicate one URL, one web address instead of two, it’s easier if there’s one web address, all people go there, that’s much easier. So I mean, there are multiple reasons where I can see where people are actually arguing for this being a good idea.

James Royal-Lawson
And developing wise, you’re not going to bring to the top of the backlog display candidates first, because you’ve got to have candidates to display. So of course, registering a candidate is going to come earlier on and the where the where dates fall and so on. Presumably the thing saying be a candidate, has to come out first.

Per Axbom
Right, so there’s a database request, a database request takes time. So you want the database request to be lower down the page, because the static content loads faster at the top.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, we don’t know the backstory,

Per Axbom
No, but we’re good at speculating.

Per Axbom
We’re good at speculating, and what we can learn from this speculation is it’s the classic thing of this one page can have different users, like we touched upon in the first article about you’ve got different contexts and you’re a human like everyone else, and you’ve got different ideas when you look at pages, but also the need for that step back and holistic think when you’re designing these things.

Per Axbom
You might be in your team bubble, or your kind of like task bubble or story bubble, or whatever you want to call it where you’re you’re tasked with developing a particular feature, but you can’t, from a user experience point of view, you can’t separate it from the whole. And here, we’ve become separated from the hole, and we haven’t really given the thought and attention that the entire process and variations of the process need to be considered.

Per Axbom
There’s also this aspect going further than just the UX and the design but systems thinking that you were almost touching upon this, but from a democratic perspective, from a democracy perspective, should becoming a presidential candidate be as free and easy as sending an email? You might argue well, that’s democratic, that gives everybody a chance, but should everything be digitalized?

Per Axbom
Should there at least be some sort of friction? There I go, again, to make sure that people actually take a step to think to actually make sure that they are serious about this thing? Well, because what I am assuming as well, as you were thinking as well, now that it became so easy and people receiving that you get you’re getting all this press, of course, I’m just gonna go in and submit my candidacy. I mean, why not? What do I have to lose?

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, you’re quite right. And, we see, in most democracies, there are checks and balances in place to stop things kind of spiralling out of control, because an infinite amount of candidates going back to infinite scroll there, is not going to be a good thing for democracy, because you would drown in not only the administration around it, but also the the choice again, back to our first article, you will be overwhelmed by the choice.

James Royal-Lawson
Here in Sweden, we have what’s called the 4% rule, when it comes to representation in Parliament from a particular political party. You can have opinions whether that’s a good or a bad thing but one of the reasons behind a political party needs to have 4% of the vote in order to have representation in Parliament, is to keep a parliament efficient, that if every party had one parliamentarian, it would be almost unmanageable, because who would form a government when you’ve got to kind of have hundreds of individuals get together. So you have guardrails, again in place, to help democracy run efficiently but still be democratic.

Per Axbom
It’s a good analogy. Actually, when I was looking online, I saw people react to this story. And in many countries, people actually don’t understand or know or are aware of that people in countries like Sweden, and also Iceland have these digital IDs. Which means because people were thinking, reading the story and thinking, well, how can they make it that easy.

Per Axbom
They think well, just go on to a website, filling in a form and you’re a candidate but actually, you do have to identify yourself digitally. You are the only person so they have verified the identity of the person. And they are verifying the identity of each person endorsing as well. So just to make that clear, if anyone was wondering.

James Royal-Lawson
Good point.

James Royal-Lawson
So it was quite nice there, Per that we actually managed to inadvertently link these two articles together in some aspects.

Per Axbom
Now I’m drawing a blank.

James Royal-Lawson
No, what I said about infinite scroll and so on, and kind of friction. We touched on some of some similar UX concepts, but drew them from two different sources, ecommerce websites and applying to be president of Iceland, or candidate to be president. Our work is never done.

James Royal-Lawson
Oh, you’ve put some recommended listening for us in the show notes.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, well, I knew full well that we’d be getting into friction. So and I knew full well we’d probably mention the fact that you’ve mentioned friction, an awful lot over the years. Well, both of us but you in particular and on top of that you have presented, you’ve had a talk about friction.

Per Axbom
Way back in Lisbon at UXLx. It was fairytale UX, and you interviewed me.

James Royal-Lawson
I did that we had Val Head and you on that show.

Per Axbom
Oh, yeah.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah and I interviewed you about your talk, Fairytale UX. It’s episode 133. So, sorry, you will have to do some scroll to get back to that or you just click in the show notes where it will be linked.

Per Axbom
So if you want, James and Per, us, as part of your next conference events or in house training, we are offering workshops, talks and courses to inspire and help you grow as individuals teams and organisations. Get in touch by emailing hej@uxpodcast.com. Remember to keep moving.

James Royal-Lawson
See you on the other side.

[Music]

Per Axbom
James, what do you do if you’re afraid of speed bumps?

James Royal-Lawson
I don’t know, Per. What should I do if I’m afraid of speed bumps?

Per Axbom
Slowly get over it.

James Royal-Lawson
Oh.