Posted on Oct 16 Comedy captured the moment as I suggested a destination to the GPS app. "Navigate to such and such place." A five-second pause. "Something went wrong." I tried again, twice. "You will arrive in three hours." Smirking, I said, "Hehe, yeah, right!" I've been through this rodeo. "No way it's three hours, more like four and a half!" An unneeded reply chimed, "Sorry, I don't understand."We hurried above the speed limit, got fast food, and hit sporadic traffic. We arrived in four and a half hours.For me, these experiences are typical, having not improved in years.Being involved in software for a time, I've had the pleasure to work with brilliant technological and product people. And yeah, every team skewed toward the happy path, preferring accurate over Accommodating.Accuracy is demanded in our culture, driven by two points: the relentless pressure to release and moving on to the next thing. Failing gracefully is not on the incentive list.Apps that are accurate perform discretely, abandoning the user experience during errors, which drives odd customer behaviors. Consumers utilize unconventionality to get what they need, such as unduly forced closing apps, clearing cache, reinstalling, tapping numerous times to get the reward, or a secret action to perform the transaction, fiddling with settings to achieve it. Or, in my case, knowing how to deal with a familiar skew of results.These behaviors have become common, a badge of honor. For customer service, there is a growing backlog of complaints, low user ratings, and rising churn.The result is a consumer that acquires pessimism, frustration, the burden of remembering unique tricks, being overcome with doubt, and, in time, abandoning the product for something else.Nonetheless, many experiences suck, and there is room to improve.If we reverse our thinking, preferring accommodating over accurate, it will positively change user experiences. For instance, choose to provide upfront rich information, being realistic of an Internet connection, and give the consumer confidence when the transaction has yet to go through but will as soon as possible. Mercilessly scrutinize the error paths, rooting out accuracy, and provide accommodation instead.Yes, accommodating experiences costs development time and incurs intense technical complexity to achieve. There isn't an easy way around managing statefulness, and technological inventions are waiting to be found to blunt the digital trauma. But it's worth an inquiry within your team, especially if the app is in production and the rush to launch has easied.I've seen it many times. When racing to get a product out, accommodating actions get cut out of scope as teams within repeat in chorus, "Nice to have!" Ask the question, "Why so?" If we don't ask, few experiences will become smooth, and cooperation in intra-app experiences will remain unexplored.Fluid, accommodating interactions do not have to be something of science fiction in software. It is worth taking steps to improve the experience starting now.Templates let you quickly answer FAQs or store snippets for re-use. Are you sure you want to hide this comment? It will become hidden in your post, but will still be visible via the comment's permalink. Hide child comments as well Confirm For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse Jake Lundberg - Oct 10 dev.to staff - Oct 15 Leslie MacNabb - Oct 13 Adewumi Saheed Adewale - Oct 13 Once suspended, Solidi will not be able to comment or publish posts until their suspension is removed. Once unsuspended, solidi will be able to comment and publish posts again. Once unpublished, all posts by solidi will become hidden and only accessible to themselves. If solidi is not suspended, they can still re-publish their posts from their dashboard. Note: Once unpublished, this post will become invisible to the public and only accessible to Doug Arcuri. They can still re-publish the post if they are not suspended. Thanks for keeping DEV Community safe. Here is what you can do to flag solidi: solidi consistently posts content that violates DEV Community's code of conduct because it is harassing, offensive or spammy. Unflagging solidi will restore default visibility to their posts. DEV Community — A constructive and inclusive social network for software developers. With you every step of your journey. Built on Forem — the open source software that powers DEV and other inclusive communities.Made with love and Ruby on Rails. DEV Community © 2016 - 2023. We're a place where coders share, stay up-to-date and grow their careers.