Why Should You Let Users Wait?

What did Cold Stone Ice creams teach me about user journeys?

When you order your "creation" (that's what they call it), many Cold Stone reps will proceed to making your sweet concoction in an animated manner.

The order taker will throw ice cream balls over their head, juggle them around with metal spoons and then sprinkle your toppings like Salt BAE.

The little circus they put up is very amusing, especially for some kids who look forward to it more than the ice cream itself.

And all this while, you never realized that you were simply waiting to get served.

That's because they made the "wait" a part of the experience.

In the past, when memory was limited, console games used some interesting "waiting" techniques.

Instead of blanking out the screen, they would make the player wait in an elevator as if they were "travelling" to a new location, while in reality they were taking their time to load graphics for the next level.

Similarly, most online products & apps involve a wait time of sorts.

Examples:

• When you sign up for a rental marketplace, you have to wait for authorization & identity approvals
• When you sign up for a website creator, the editor takes some time to load up the environment
• When you request for a heavy report on a CRM, you have to wait for it to be generated
• When you order something on a delivery app, you have to wait for the order to arrive at your doorstep

Thus, when charting out your user journey, circle out the wait times and see how you can make them more pleasing and interesting. Can you morph them into something else other than idling?

For example,

• Even though an internet outage isn't their wrongdoing, Google Chrome lets you play a little Dino game to keep you entertained
• Asana, Webflow and Wrike display amusing phrases like "Feeding the unicorns" on their wait interstitials. I think they keep mixing them around too
• Delivery apps like Foodpanda & Talabat give you mini-updates on where your order is in a casual, engaging manner accompanied with animations
• Airbnb allows you to keep browsing the marketplace and save listings even when you're not approved to rent out.

Waiting is a part of life. Take it as an opportunity to make someone smile.

And as they say:

"If you're late due to fate, but their wait was great, there remains very little to hate."