Anirudh PalaskarEdPlus at Arizona State University · UX Researcher

Parkinson Law For UX #uxdesign

Name: Parkinson Law For UX #uxdesign
Uploaded: 2023-07-20T15:30:15+00:00
Duration: 57 s
Channel: Anirudh Palaskar
Description: In this short monologue, the speaker explains how many hotel and flight booking websites place a short countdown timer (often around three minutes) on…

20 Jul 2023 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:57

In this short monologue, the speaker explains how many hotel and flight booking websites place a short countdown timer (often around three minutes) on the final checkout step where users enter personal details. The timer is deliberately set to create a sense of urgency, prompting users to complete the booking within the allotted time. The speaker links this design choice to Parkinson's Law—a psychological principle stating that people tend to expand the amount of work to fill the time available to complete it. By limiting the time, the digital product leverages this tendency, ensuring users finish the process quickly, which in practice leads to a high completion rate within the timer window.

Chapters

Did you know that most of the websites that we use for hotel booking and flight booking has a small timer at the last step where you actually have to provide the personal details and do the checkout? Well, that specific timer is for you to directly or indirectly complete the entire booking process in that specific time. And guess what? This actually works in real life. Most of the people end up completing the entire booking process within that given amount of 3 minutes. And do you know why is this? Well, this is simply because of a psychological law known as Parkinson's Law, which states that people will keep on expanding the work to fill the entire time they have in hand to complete that task. For example, if I give you 24 hours to complete a task, you're gonna take that 24 hours to actually complete that task. And if I give you 6 hours to complete another task, you will make sure that you take 6 hours to complete that task. And that is what the entire law is all about. You will make sure that you utilize the entire time that is given to you to complete a specific task, even though it can be done within a lesser amount of time. And that is the very reason the digital product uses this psychological law to make sure that you complete the entire checking process within 3 minutes.