BA Passengers Don't Clap

I read carefully considered essays on design philosophy of software whenever I stumble across them, and I (rarely) fly with good quality airlines. I swear there is a parallel between them, and this essay is an attempt to get that point out. It’s probably not done very well.

Before you read any of this, please go and visit the lovely Terry Godier and drink deeply of his thoughtful and carefully considered essays on design.

Especially the ‘Phantom Obligations’ one, which is a masterpiece of careful consideration of how apps (in particular, RSS readers) should work.

I read a lot in my RSS reader.

I also use Miniflux, because I no longer want to be dependent on an external collector of my reading, and will happily consume RSS feeds into a collection app that I host, then choose to read them in the Miniflux interface.

That interface is good, but commits many of the UI crimes that Terry mentions.

And, oddly, until he mentioned them, I didn’t see them - but now I do.

Now, I realise that I was responding to the Phantom Obligation of consuming all the feeds, paying attention to a few that were noisier than most out of a sense of responsibility, and setting aside time to properly read the essays produced by people like Craig Mod. Who is a genius.

Terry points out that the design of the system drives the behaviour of the reader. And I found a strange parallel between this, and airlines.

Bear with me, and you’ll (hopefully) get it too.

Like most brits in my financial circumstances, I like to take holidays in the sun, and thanks to commitments of family, budgeting, and timescales, I’m often to be found squeezed into a seat on a popular budget airline.

These flights are cheap, brightly coloured, often grossly limited in their creature comforts, and supplementary charges abound. That’s fine - that’s the experience.

Even with those charges and the overages, the flight is still pretty cheaply priced, and for a flight to a destination - when you’re spending substantially more time at the destination than in transit - it’s fine.

The passengers on these flights always burst into applause when the plane lands. For some reason, the passengers are delighted that we have landed safely, even though by almost any measure, a plane is the safest form of transport there is. (no sources, this may be wrong).

After I’d read Terry’s essay on Phantom Obligations, though, I realised something.

We are squeezed into a tube, having been charged to carry a bag, pick a seat, and have anything over and above simply sitting in a seat.

Want to have a drink? Pay for it. Food? Pay. Want to sit next to your loved ones, rather than 20 rows away? Pay. We’ve got used to that experience, and factor it in when choosing a flight.

Every part of the experience is driving you to be beholden to the airline, and be grateful that their attention has alighted - albeit briefly - on your needs, via the most convenient method of payment.

You are held to their timetable. Every request is answered only if the airline has decided that it fits into their expectations.

In doing this, a budget airline teaches its passengers to be grateful for everything, which extends to the fundamental service of getting them to their destination safely. Passengers clap because they are grateful they weren’t plunged into the sea or the side of a mountain during their trip.

But recently, I had the fortune to fly on British Airways for a weekend away to celebrate my wife’s birthday. The flight was on the same type of plane - an Airbus A320 - that is common amongst most airlines - but the service was radically different.

Sure, I had to pay to pick a seat, but it was automatically assumed that if more than one passenger is booked, that they would want to fly together. I had the chance to select a hot meal in advance If I wanted one. Baggage allowances were generous, and included. The cost of the flight was higher, but it wasn’t that much more.

The service was leagues apart. We felt welcomed, and appreciated. Water and snacks were given to everyone as a matter of course. The flight attendants were delightful, human beings (even taking the time to ply my wife with champagne when they realised it was her birthday). The pilot announcements were jolly and chatty.

At no point did I ever feel like I was beholden to the airline; rather that they appreciated we’d selected them, and had chosen to use their service.

At the end of both flights, after landing smoothly, none of the passengers clapped.

That’s not to say that the passengers weren’t grateful for an exemplary service - I’m sure they were. I certainly was. My wife remarked on how much nicer the experience was.

But the difference was that we were recognised as patrons, respected their professional ability to carry out their obligations, and didn’t feel the need to hand out applause like overbearing parents congratulating a toddlers’ first steps. They just did their job, very well, and we understood our relative relationship.

This is where I draw the parallel.

A thoughtfully designed app (as per Terry’s essay) recognises the obligations placed on the user and designs them out. BA flights are smooth, professional affairs that respect their passengers.

Budget airlines place so many constraints and payment gateways in front of their passengers before they are granted even the least tolerant experience, and educate them to be little better than cattle, resulting in their endless gratitude for the staff merely doing their jobs.

I’m happy to be corrected here, but now I think about it in more detail, a smooth and efficient interaction with any professional creates a vastly different experience than one where the user is at the behest of a controlling entity - and the worse experience can drive more gratitude, simply because you’re grateful to have been helped at all.

From a professional, the smooth experience is expected, and therefore doesn’t need to be rewarded. The fee is its’ own reward.