The Secret to Great Experience Design
How a website showed me the truth about experience design
What happens when you design for a person and not a user?
Jennifer Psaki, White House Press Secretary: If you look at what we’ve done over the course of time, we’ve quadrupled the size of our testing plan, we’ve cut the costs significantly over the past few months, and this effort to ensure you can get your test refunded means 150 million Americans will be able to get free tests.
Mara Liasson, NPR national correspondent: That’s kind of complicated, though. Why not just make ’em free and give ’em out, make them available everywhere?
Psaki: Should we just send one to every American?
Liasson: Maybe.
Psaki: Then what happens if you, if every American has one test? How much does that cost?
This exchange is from a White House press briefing on December 6th, 2021. [1]
I don't have many memories between the years 2020 and 2021, likely due to the stress from the early days of the COVID pandemic, but I do remember watching that moment live. And I do remember the feeling of shock and disgust by Press Secretary Psaki's response.
Should we just send a free COVID test to every American?
Psaki defended her incredulous reply the very next day, explaining that the administration's policy was "not to send everyone in the country a test just to send—to have millions of tests go unused where we know others can make use of them." [1]
The week Press Secretary Psaki responsed sarcastically to the idea of sending free at-home COVID tests to all Americans, that is the week ending December 10th, 2021, 9,744 people would die from COVID or COVID-related illness.
The next week 10,268 people died. There would be a reported total of 462,193 deaths in 2021 [2].
Well, yes. Sort of.
I was not alone in my reaction to the press secretary's response. The Biden administration received significant blowback for its testing policy despite the alarming rise in deaths. Psaki was personally criticized for her sarcastic tone.
The blowback and critical reporting was so bad that just two weeks later on Tuesday December 21, 2021, President Biden announced that his administration would make available free at-home COVID test kits to every American BUT keeping in line with previous policy, these test kits would only be made available to those who wanted one. [3]
Enter website.
Psaki: “We’re making tests free and accessible without the risk of them going to waste in the home of people who do not want them. So people will go to a website — which again, we will put out there in January when the information is available — and they will be able to request free tests.” [3]
Waste. What a portent
That week 23,399 people would die of COVID/COVID-related illness [1].
COVIDTests.gov launched about a month later, January 20, 2022 to rave reviews. It worked (mostly)! It was built so quickly: move fast and break nothing! Lessons learned from the healthcare insurance online marketplace. Long live Obamacare! [4]
As I scrolled through social media posts from admired user experience practitioners lauding the website, I was flummoxed.
How could they not see it? How could they not state that this website should not exist?
How could people who have dedicated their careers to mastering and understanding the relationship between people and interfaces not see what was so obvious?
And that was when I learned the first BIG secret of experience design:
A user is not a person.
In creating or structuring your business's initial digital assets, you may have encountered instructional UX content about "designing for users," or "putting users first". And that content may even use the words user and person interchangeably. I know I did. But a user is not a person.
A user is a data.
A user is an entry in a database.
A user is an amalgamation of mouse behaviors.
A user is assumed consent.
A user only exists within its context and no other place.
The best experience design was to prioritize the people--the overwhelming majority of people--who wanted at-home tests by just sending them at-home testing kits, not forcing them to request one. Like we receive a Census packet every ten years, just send people at-home COVID testing kits.
In short: The best experience design was for the COVIDTests.gov website to not exist.
The Biden administration explicitly wanted to limit the number of people who could receive a free at-home testing kit in order to reduce 'waste.' Again: The week the press secretary scoffed at sending free at-home COVID testing kits 9,744 people died. A reported total of 462,193 people died in 2021 from COVID/COVID-related illness alone [1]. But 'waste'.
When you--or anyone you might hire--designs for a user, your success metrics add up to what I like to call Efficiency Theater. For example, I was able to complete the COVIDTests.gov form fairly quickly. Efficient! But completing the form was unnecessary. Theater! And just exactly how much 'waste' did this website reduce? Unknown and so Theater!
When you design your digital experience for a person, your success metrics become specific to your business and your customers. That means each of your digital assets--website, social media accounts, email newsletter--need to serve an explicit purpose or they should not exist. Each digital asset needs to deliver on its purpose or it should not exist.
AI marketing is an example high Efficiency Theater, and I expand on this idea in the forthcoming ebook, The Pepper Scotch AI Handbook.
In the meantime, join me at the next training session to learn more about experience design and navigating today's digital landscape.
Tuesday 18 Mar 2025 @ 1pm Eastern
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/jen-psaki-mocked-free-home-tests-three-weeks-before-omicron-testing-crisis-hit-america-covid-19-1662564
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm
[3] https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-admin-free-covid-test-kits-psaki-recently-dismissed-idea-2021-12?op=1
[4] https://www.wired.com/story/plaintext-joe-biden-free-covid-test-website/
[] https://www.mediaite.com/news/jen-psaki-takes-another-crack-at-free-home-covid-test-question-we-dont-want-to-have-millions-of-tests-go-unused/
[] https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-covid-winter-plan-omicron-america-key-points-1655738
