Hey ,

It's officially the Holiday season! ❤️ As much as we enjoy hosting dinners at home, we also love going to fancy restaurants in our city to explore the festivity. What's that one restaurant you're looking forward to go to this Holiday season?

Now imagine that you're sitting at that favorite restaurant of yours, and you've decided to order an exquisite entrée costing about $35. The server takes your order, and shows up with the dish instantaneously. 

How would that make you feel psychologically? Would you still feel like the dish is worth the money you're paying for?

Next..

I'm certain you have used money transfer apps on your mobile at some point. Let's say you want to send $1000 as a holiday gift to someone who lives in another country. You set up all your account information, add the sender and recipient details along with the amount to be transferred. After a second after hitting "send", you see that the transaction has been added to your account stating that the money was transferred successfully. Yeah, imagine if all this took just one second! 

Would you trust the "instantaneous" experience that lacks at providing reassurance regarding activities performed in the background?

I wouldn't. I would definitely check with the recipient to verify the transfer which clearly causes friction in the long term. 

Now I have two questions for you:

Q: In the first restaurant example, what if there was enough operational transparency like a semi-open kitchen where chefs can partially be seen preparing your entrée, and the server took 20 minutes to bring up a beautiful looking plate just like you had imagined? 

Q: In the next example, what if there were clear reassuring updates provided to you regarding the activities that are expected to exist in a money transfer workflow?

Eg: Transferring funds worth $1000 -> Processing your transfer (5s delay) -> Finalizing your transfer (5s delay) -> Funds processed (with either a confirmation of the transfer or a confirmation of the amount of wait time) 

Wouldn't the above two scenarios instill more trust and reassurance in the end users as opposed to the previous examples? This concept is known as Labor Illusion or Labor Perception.