Certainty: An Overlooked Product Value

Today’s tech industry is keen on discussing AI, ecosystems, intelligence, and the Internet of Everything, yet it rarely discusses an increasingly scarce resource—attention.

Product managers discuss user growth, activity, and time spent, as well as interaction efficiency, learning curves, and task completion rates. However, they rarely consider how much of a user’s attention a product consumes daily.

By attention, I don’t simply mean reducing ads or notifications, nor is it merely about minimalism. Rather, it’s a more fundamental design philosophy: human attention is finite, and it should be reserved for truly important matters, not wasted on understanding, adapting to, or learning a product.

Many brands and products I personally favor, whether it’s an iPhone, a Tesla, or certain software tools, share a common trait: they rarely make users focus their attention on the product itself.

Recently, I was at a government office, and the staff was verifying my documents. I needed to quickly find a file on my phone. I had both an iPhone and an Android phone with me, and I instinctively picked up the Android one. I just wanted to exit the current app to return to the home screen and find another app. However, when I swiped up the navigation bar, my finger moved slightly too high, and the system immediately entered split-screen mode. The entire interface changed instantly: the top half remained on the previous app, while the bottom half displayed a full page of app listings, along with new interaction options like split-screen and floating windows. I was momentarily stunned.

Of course, I knew what this feature was and how to exit it; under normal circumstances, I would have operated it fine. But at that moment, my attention was almost entirely focused on the administrative process. I was thinking about whether my documents were in order, what the staff member had just said, and where I needed to go next. The phone was merely a temporary tool to look up information. Yet, it suddenly entered an unexpected state, forcing me to divert my attention from the task at hand, understand why it had changed, and only then could I proceed with my original action.

What truly consumes attention is often not the feature itself, but rather unexpected state transitions. An action with a very clear objective, due to a subtle gesture deviation, suddenly enters a different interaction logic. The system tries to guess the user’s intent, and the user, in turn, has to guess the system’s current state. In this back-and-forth, meaningless attention consumption occurs.

This preference for reducing attention consumption also manifests in my evaluation of certain feature designs.

Take mobile wallets, for instance. I really like the iPhone’s design of double-clicking the power button to bring up the wallet. Customized Android systems, on the other hand, offer various shortcuts: double-clicking the power button, long-pressing the fingerprint sensor, swiping from a screen corner, or accessing it from the control center. While this seemingly offers more freedom, payments almost always occur in places like convenience stores, subway turnstiles, or mall checkouts, where actions need to be completed quickly. I don’t want to have to recall which opening methods my phone supports. Double-clicking the power button has become muscle memory: pick up the phone, double-click, pay. The entire process requires almost no thought, and attention remains focused on the act of payment itself, rather than on how many ways the product provides to achieve it.

Or consider this: some people wish the iPhone would incorporate Touch ID, offering an additional biometric authentication method alongside Face ID. I’ve never been particularly interested in this. Face ID has established a very natural interaction: pick up the phone, glance, done. For certain niche scenarios, an extra authentication method might solve a problem. However, in the vast majority of daily use cases, each added interaction means another branch of interaction that requires the user to think and choose. Product design often focuses on adding features and constantly introducing new options, but ensuring users always know what will happen next and controlling the number of possibilities is equally important in design.

This feeling later extended to home appliances.

I prefer traditional Japanese electric kettles: a single physical button, press it blindly to dispense water instantly, release to stop. The entire process requires no learning. Many modern smart kettles, however, use capacitive buttons, connect to the internet, are controlled by apps, and offer various keep-warm modes. These features aren’t without value, but I just want a cup of hot water. I don’t want to have to confirm if a button has been triggered every time I use it, or open my phone for a simple, everyday action. For a product used repeatedly every day, if each use requires even a small amount of extra attention, these minor consumptions accumulate, eventually becoming a burden on the user experience.

This sentiment also explains why I can understand Tesla users.

People often discuss online why Tesla continues to sell so well. Many analyses revolve around brand, loyalty, autonomous driving, or performance, with some even suggesting Tesla users haven’t experienced better products. However, if someone genuinely wants an electric car that minimizes attention consumption, there aren’t many options on the market. Many brands constantly add features, entry points, and modes, hoping to demonstrate product strength through feature richness. Yet, another segment of users is truly willing to pay for a system that remains consistent, without needing to learn a new entry point today or adapt to a new logic tomorrow. For them, the easier the product fades into the background, the more attention can be dedicated to driving itself.

Nio also gives me a similar feeling, though this experience isn’t carried through to the end.

Nio’s brand and vehicle designs are quite restrained, and the overall brand impression is relatively consistent, earning recognition from many consumers like myself who value design quality. However, upon opening the app, one encounters a completely different experience. Activities, a store, a community, crowdfunding, and various operational content constantly reach users through pushes, consuming a significant amount of their attention. An app that primarily serves as a car key keeps reminding you to participate in events, browse the store, and join discussions. This sense of disconnect is essentially the same problem as the accidental split-screen activation mentioned earlier: both force users to redirect their attention back to the product, rather than their own goals.

This pursuit might seem like minimalism, but it isn’t. Minimalism is merely a form of presentation. What truly concerns me is whether a product respects the user’s attention. I’ve found a more precise term for this experience: certainty.

Certainty is not a design style, but a method for managing attention. One interaction corresponds to one clear outcome, one action corresponds to one stable feedback, and one entry point assumes one fixed responsibility. When these relationships are sufficiently stable, the user’s brain gradually converts them into muscle memory, and the product slowly recedes from the conscious to the subconscious level. Users don’t need to repeatedly understand or adapt to it, nor will a routine operation lead them into a completely unfamiliar state. Their finite attention is naturally preserved for truly important matters.

Today’s tech industry values computing resources, storage resources, and energy management, yet it rarely treats attention as a design object that needs careful management. Many products still view user attention as a commercial resource, hoping to gain more time spent and higher activity. However, they rarely consider that every notification, every unexpected interaction, and every cognitive process undertaken to understand the product actually consumes the user’s finite attention.

In the future, excellent tech products should compete not just on parameters, performance, or AI capabilities, but also on their ability to protect users’ attention—a capability long overlooked by both consumers and businesses.

Certainty is the most fundamental and easily overlooked principle for protecting attention. It ensures users always know what will happen next, allows the product to gradually disappear from conscious awareness, and returns attention to the truly important people and things.