Our pleasure is your leisure

We work primarily with the leisure market. As a Marketer it’s got me thinking about what we can learn about the future of leisure and the way we consume it.

It’s important to have a proportional work/life balance to get the best out of people. I come up with great ideas and do my best thinking whilst doing what I enjoy most, being in the great outdoors, hiking, cycling or climbing. So leisure is important to me and has incredibly positive effects on my mental wellbeing. Chasing deadlines can leave me feeling rushed, pressured or anxious. Without any downtime I'm not at my best, none of us are.

There is a common theory that in the future we’ll work less. Does this mean we’ll have more time for leisure activities? That's great but this idea seems too simple to me. We live in an age where some are working harder and longer, increasingly trying to fit more into their days. This includes finding ways to squeeze leisure time in, which surely misses the point of what leisure is for?

An article by the Guardian titled ‘Will jobs exist by 2020?’ looks at the future of work. It concludes the nature of work is going to change; “the jobs of tomorrow won’t be the same as jobs of today.” The article suggests it is possible the future workforce will shift towards part time and freelance work. This will happen as new technology affects the way we work and artificial intelligence helps automate our workforces. This will even affect the way we train for certain jobs as the ‘job for life’ becomes a thing of the past and those that carve out successful careers will need to be adaptable, possibly working multiple roles at the same time. This leads to a greater need of training to be function driven and fit for purpose, delivered in shorter blocks and commonplace throughout people’s lives.

Insider, in a recent article, expands on this technical revolution we’re seeing and advises the way we approach the world of work and our business interests may need to change. They say as far back as the 60s/70s children were being taught that in the future they would work less and have more time for leisure activities. The Institute for Public Research Scotland estimates that 46% of Scottish jobs are at risk of automation by 2030.

John Maynard Keynes in 1930 said of the future that “Our grandchildren” would work around “three hours a day” and probably only by choice.

So, as far back as 1930 we predicted a future workforce that works less and in theory would have more leisure time. So, I’ve looked at this concept. How are we spending our time and what is the implications on our work/life balance, how much time are we leaving for our leisure activities?

Somewhere along the line, something’s gone wrong. It’s fairly easy to see where this has come from. As the processes by which we do things speeds up then we can do more in less time. However, what is really happening is that we’re now driven by a desire to want to do more, to fit more in, rather than take more time for ourselves. The Economist suggests we’re now living in a world where time-saving tools and appliances guarantee more speed and less drudgery in all parts of life.

All we have to do is look around to know this is happening right now. As an example, before I left for work this morning I paid some bills, checked the news from three different apps (RT, Al Jazeera and the BBC), made a few purchases on Amazon, browsed a few climbing websites to find the best location for my weekend jaunt to the countryside and downloaded some new music for the day. And I did all of this in the first 30 minutes of waking up because I know I’ll probably have to work late. None of these tasks were particularly difficult but I do get the feeling I’m trying to squeeze more into my day than I have ever done before. I can carry out multiple tasks at the same time using technology. But now there is always a desire to want to do more and tick more things off, mostly just because I can.

Time saving apps and software create new ways of doing things. Product design is improved over time, creating even quicker ways of doing things and on it goes. We expect to be able to do things quickly, it’s part of the way we work. The Economist says “People visit websites less often if they are more than 250 milliseconds slower than a close competitor, according to research from Google. More than a fifth of internet users will abandon an online video if it takes longer than five seconds to load. When experiences can be calculated according to the utility of a millisecond, all seconds are more anxiously judged for their utility.”

So, two things; People are impatient and if there is a growing demand to increase the speed in which we can complete tasks, watch videos and browse websites and in the the future there are less jobs because of technological advances, then does this mean we’ll have more spare time for leisure activities?

I started to do a bit more research and i’ve tried to sum up my findings as simply as possibly.

As we place more emphasis on how quickly we complete tasks the value of our time increases. Paradoxically, the richer we get, the harder we work and the less time we have to do what we want. Economic progress and higher wages, driven by increasing productivity has led to this idea that the more you’re paid for work, the longer hours you are required to work and this leaves less time for leisure activities. Basically, If you want the higher wages, you need to work longer. However if some work harder than ever, whilst others work less due to a shrinking job market this creating a ‘leisure gap’?

Overall it seems there is a disconnection between what Keynes said in 1930 and how things seem to be happening. Some of us may be on track to work less but this comes at a cost of unemployment, whilst others are overworked and have no time for leisure, trying to fit too many things into already busy lives. According to Keynes we should be awash with spare time but it seems the pace we are living at is creating a ‘harried leisure class’.

However, there is an extra layer to this. As the job market is changing, people are adapting and are now able to choose one, or multiple roles that support their lifestyles, thereby having careers they enjoy rather than working to pay the bills. A generally happier existence spending more time working and even mixing business with pleasure, markedly with jobs that require travel. These might be the lucky ones? Check out this article by The Telegraph, on Bleisure and how millennials and younger people especially are combining their business with leisure experiences.

So people should have more time but often don’t, how can we help as designers?

Some of our clients and their customers/buyers are working upward of 60 hours per week. As designers we have a duty to place greater importance on improving brand and technology interactions so they are more pleasurable, snugly fitting in with customer’s work or leisure activities.

Can we help people make more time for leisure, by saving time? I think sometimes we should really stop and think about this. And maybe we should find innovative ways to remind our end users that downtime is important. Ultimately, finding ways to reduce their anxiety through completing tasks quickly, whilst affirming positive reasons we should be doing this in the first place.

‘Don’t Make Me Think’ by Steve Krug amongst other UX focussed literature suggests that a website that stops and makes us think isn’t designed as well as it could be, which is a popular idea to help ease the stress and anxiety we have from completing tasks quickly. It’s time consuming not knowing what we should or shouldn’t be doing. However, maybe this has been taken too literally? Actually, should we encourage people to stop and think, just a little? Maybe Keynes was right and we should all be working less, we’ve just let things get away from us.

This idea in Krug’s book and other UX design guides has massively helped the way we interact and design to enhance user satisfaction by improving usability. However, has this come from an obsession with speed, which is now contributing towards an addictive cycle; where we try to complete tasks quicker, so we can fit more tasks in? Are we not giving ourselves time to digest information and should we be more conscious of how we can affect our user’s journey to break them away from habitual instant gratification of completing tasks. How about rewarding them with reminders to step away and disconnect for a while?

It’s important to remember UX is about improving the user’s experience, not necessarily about just making it quicker. As designers and consultants working with clients, we must find the right balance of providing simple, pleasurable interactions whilst not obfuscating the important facts. We do this to improve people’s lives and give them more time to do other things. Maybe we should be reminding ourselves to stop and relax, catch up with friends and make room for leisure in our lives before moving on to the next pressing task on our list.

Cramming in leisure activities doesn’t always have the positive effects down time should. We see this through our own work/life balance. As designer’s we’re treated to a bird’s eye view of a brand’s experience, both internally and how it affects the customer. Good UX should consider context, is absolute efficiency useful or is it time to slow down? It’s one of many considerations a brand has when improving their customer journey. Alongside confidence, aesthetic, pleasure and control. Optimising an experience is so much more than speed.

To conclude, as designers it’s our responsibility to enhance the user experience. We create meaning and delight. Perhaps it’s time to focus not just on the time it takes to complete a task, but also the time in between and what we choose to do with it.

Treat yourself, add a break to your to-do list.