According to statistics, 54% of people would not take pilotless flights and 39% would never take a car ride with autopilot. We love to keep control of our lives. This 'omnipotent control' causes anxiety when we cannot predetermine the course of life, and rewards us when we have it well in hand.
As users, we like instant system response to all our actions. When a system doesn't respond quickly, we don't feel in control. The most common solution is the loading screen, but people are impatient and hate to wait. Illusion of control comes in handy here—give users interactive elements and do not limit them, even if it seems rational.
Placebo buttons are a real and useful tool. The Gmail Refresh button and Pull-to-Refresh in mobile clients give users a feeling of speeding up email delivery—even though email is delivered from the server almost immediately without that action.
Idle time feels longer than active time. A system can offer an interactive, exciting process not related to primary actions to keep users engaged. Tutorials with interesting facts, questionnaires, or mini-games are examples. These must be relevant and terminable at any time.
Providing technically redundant actions creates perceived control. A dialogue window with both a Cancel button and an X button is a good example. Cancel means disapproval; X means hesitation. Removing either removes a meaningful choice from the user.
A feeling of control is essential to each of us—more so on an intuitive than on a logical level. Sometimes providing this emotion is more critical than actual control. By designing user experience, we can provide the feeling of control through a set of useful tools.
