029: Personalized micro-interaction fails with Noel Childs

Welcome to a new episode of A76. Today, we're taking a detour from our usual in-depth interviews with designers and makers to explore something a little different—micro-interactions and moments of personalization that could be vastly improved.

If you're curious about what's happening over on our Patreon or if you simply want to support the A76 Design Pod, head over to patreon.com/A76designpod. By joining, you'll gain access to exclusive episodes and my original series on hyper-personalized AI assistants, dubbed NoelAI. In that series, I dive into topics of working for tech, personal risk concerns, the uncanny ID, conversational UI, behavioral habit mapping and debating the pros and cons of an AI assistant.

Looking ahead this season, Matt Saip and I will discuss our journey in making the A76 Design Pod a carbon-neutral production including our insights, research, and plans for achieving this goal.

Also, exciting news—I'll be announcing an in-person A76 event in Chicago, featuring an open debate panel, salon-style, towards the end of the season. Stay tuned for topics and details.

A big thank you to all our Patreon members—your support makes this all possible.

Now, let's dive into the world of personalization—specifically, the micro-interactions and moments that absolutely drive me bonkers. I can't turn off my designer brain when engaging with these frequently failing experiences, even in my daily life. And while it may sound harsh, my aim is to help us learn as designers by examining these small, fixable interactions. And all the examples we'll discuss are drawn from well-resourced brands, that should do better. While I'm not personally connected to these brands or their teams, these are interactions I've personally experienced. And while I have hundreds I could pull from, I've pulled five for example.

I'm fully aware of the challenges involved in launching amazing digital experiences, from platform and database limitations to the inevitable concessions designers must make. If you've worked on any of the examples I discuss today, I'd love to hear from you. Reach out via email or on BlueSky. Enjoy!

Example references

1. EA Sports FC
2. NordiTrack Treadmills
3. Chipotle App
4. Apple Ultra Watch & Suunto Race Watch
5. My Northwestern App

A76 was created by Noel Childs

Season 3 on Scale is produced by Noel Childs
Season 2 on Change was produced by Noel Childs
Season 1 on AI was produced by Casey Hudetz and Noel Childs

Our theme music was composed and performed by Stella Solveig
and mixed and mastered by Abbey Nettleton
Our outro was read by Kari Childs

If you like what you hear, please give us a rating.
Or become a member of the A76 Patreon at patreon.com/A76designpod
Have a question or comment, email noel@A76pod.com
and connect with us on Bluesky

Chapters

• 3:00 Criteria for the examples
• 4:41 EA Sports FC's personalized content
• 7:17 NordiTrack's product registration
• 9:34 Chipotle app ordering flow
• 11:48 Apple watch activity personalization
• 14:47 Northwestern medical app and lab results
• 17:19 Why we pay attention to experience fails