How Clever Design Can Reduce Anxiety

Think about the psychological difference between making a £1 and a £100,000 payment.

Only one would make you physically sweat.

Very different emotions and behaviours—yet most banks offer a single interface. 

Weird when you think about it, right?

Why isn't it more common to show dynamic "anti-anxiety" context to users who are making large transfers?

Even something as simple as this:

I doubt many people sending £100,000 would opt for efficiency over clarity.

So why not experiment with adding even more friction when making very large payments?

For example, an optional challenge to make users more comfortable.

However, that doesn't mean you can't control it. People are incredibly perceptive to subtle signs of disorder.

This is why one of these checkouts feels less comfortable to use.

Now take that familiar design, and consider the difference that simply misaligning the CTA label makes.

"Should I trust this site? Is this a scam? Maybe something's broken".

Anxiety is hesitation to take an action. It's uncertainty.

It's mostly subconscious and automatic—but in this Cheatsheet, I'll demonstrate simple ways to give a proverbial cup of digital tea.

Let's get warmed up with a few simple examples of how context can help reduce anxiety.

This is so challenging because once you know how something works, it can be hard to remember what it's like to see it for the first time.

But the fix can be a single line of context.

For example, Figma understands that updating their app may cause anxiety about losing work between versions.

The fix: 5 words.

The anxieties might be around data privacy.

ChatGPT will reassure you that the creator of a custom GPT can't view your chats.

Or perhaps it's simply to clarify the context of what you're being shown.

If you’re planning a trip to a different time zone, Citymapper will specify which time zone it’s using for the departing time.

And this contextual buffer doesn't have to be text.

When recording an audio clip on Discord, the footer will bounce around to the input volume of your voice.

What it's actually doing is reassuring you that your input method is working.

i.e., it reduces the anxiety that you'll finish recording the perfect clip, and it wasn't capturing any noise.

In many cases, anxiety causes actions to feel uncomfortable.

Whereby have identified that when joining a video call, one source of anxiety is that people don't know if their camera is on, off, or loading.

So they use words, "join with cam off", not just an icon.

Or, think about the general anxiety you have when booking a trip.

You get to the final step and normally have two actions:

• Complete the purchase
• Go back

When making a reservation on Booking, the secondary CTA isn't to 'cancel', but to "Check Your Booking". 

This subtly calms hesitation, with a much lower risk next step.

Or think about signing up to Rise.

During sign up, users can opt in to be reminded before the trial ends—reassuring them that they won’t forget.

Similarly, after downloading Arc, you'll be asked if you want to set it as your default browser. 

But what's smart here, is that they offer a lower commitment option to try it for a week.

It reduces the anxiety that you'll hate Arc and need to go back and change your settings.

Or think about becoming an Airbnb host.

Perhaps someone will trash your house or lose your only set of keys.

To ease you into how it all works, Airbnb will let you specify that your first guest has to be experienced, with a good track record.

In that instance, a feature (or filter) is designed to get you to take an action.

Often it's; "what just happened?", "did it happen?" or "will my boss find out?".

Let's re-look at the example of waiting to join a video call. 

You're running late, you know that people are probably talking already, so you click to join, but then.... nothing.

"Oh no, they've missed me. Nobody saw that. Maybe I should message someone on Slack".

Well, while waiting to join a Whereby call (in the lobby), you'll see when the host has acknowledged your 'knock', and they can message you in a single click.

When sending yourself a test alert (i.e., to mimic if your website has gone down) with BetterStack, you'll be reassured that your colleagues have not been messaged.

If you hide a movie on Amazon Prime, you'll see reassuring context that you can still search for this title later.

This is important because it explains the mechanism of hiding.

Without BetterStack, Whereby and Amazon Prime contextualising the outcome, people might be nervous to take the action again.

But what about products you use every day?

Once you're familiar with something, do you still get anxious?

Yes. As an extreme example, think about what it means to see your Mac Pinwheel spinner.

i.e., a point in time where you were expecting something, but it hasn't happened yet.

It might still happen, but the lack of feedback is worrying.

For example, imagine pasting something into Figma.

You've pressed paste, but nothing happened. Has it crashed? Will it paste? Should I try again? Will I lose my work?

They've got a clever way of subtly calming you down. If pasting takes longer than a second, you'll see this message.

Or, if you zoom out of your artboard in Framer, and your content exists (but is out of view), you'll see a reassuring prompt.

i.e., "don't worry, you haven't lost your work, it's just you're not looking at it".

Once you start to recognise this as being damaging, it's everywhere (and solvable).

Why not show previews from the first real page?

Let me reiterate an earlier point: anxiety happens in the user's mind, not inside the interface.

With the Google Docs example, that preview is showing exactly what it's designed to. 

This isn't a bug.

But the lack of a preview, could mean that the document is empty, or it could mean that they've lost their life's work.

The user might not know which of those it is.