Designing for disappointment

Keep discouraged users coming back by designing for all moments, including the bad ones
How Fitbit and dscout researched delivering bad news and our best practices for doing it better

No one wants to think about the moments when a user misses their goals or fails a part of your process—it's not fun to think about disappointing anyone. But, it happens: People don't get job call backs, they don't hit their step goal, and sometimes they don't match with any dates. 

dscout teamed up with Fitbit to research how companies break the bad news to their users. After analyzing 900 moments of disappointment—from the easily forgiveable to the full on, day-ruining—we came up with tactics to make sure your bad news is delivered in a way that gets users coming back. Our Director of User Success, Jaymie Wahlen, along with Brennan Browne, UX Research Manager at Fitbit, presented the findings at the Qual360 conference in Washington, DC.

Interested in learning more? We're happy to talk about how you may get value from using dscout.