The Importance of Feedback from a Product

Sometimes it may save a life, kill, disturb, annoy or inform

Mechanical keyboard — considered one of the best types of keyboards due to its tactile feedback.

Ever watch people entering an elevator and repeatedly push the Up button? Or repeatedly push the pedestrian button at a street crossing? Or hit a refresh button many times because the loading bar keeps spinning and nothing happens?

What is missing in all these cases is feedback — some way of letting you know that what you did is working. Feedback acknowledges actions and shows results to keep people informed.

Early digital camera models did not provide any tactile or sound feedback when a picture was taken. Now, most of them produce a satisfying but fake shutter click when a photo was taken. Most smartphones produce a sound when you take a picture and a vibration when the phone is on silence too. But imagine how shallow and misleading it would be if there would be no feedback.

Feedback is a central feature of life. The process of feedback governs how we grow, respond to stress and challenge, and regulate factors such as body temperature, blood pressure and cholesterol level. The mechanisms operate at every level, from the interaction of proteins in cells to the interaction of organisms in complex ecologies — M. B. Hoagland and B. Dodson, The Way Life Works

Feedback is everywhere. Even in biology (or our bodies) use feedback to tell you that specific actions are wrong (regularly eating lousy food, getting flu, etc.) or right. With all the digital world being so advanced our body’s nervous system needs to feel feedback to send signals to our brain that things work.

This means that our designs should give clear responses on what is happening on the screen or with a certain action. And a user should not make an effort…