I recently noticed a thoughtful bit of User Experience while using my windshield wipers. Like most modern cars, mine has an intermittent wiper mode that includes a dial to control the frequency of wiper activation. What I noticed is that when you adjust the frequency so that the wipers activate more often (in shorter intervals), they also activate immediately regardless of where it was in the timing cycle. When decreasing the activation frequency this does not happen, and the wipers don’t activate again until the next interval is reached.

Now, you may be thinking who the hell cares, but I haven’t been able to get it out of my head since I noticed it. I think it shows quite a bit of thoughtfulness by whoever came up with the idea and managed to get it implemented. It’s not something anyone would complain about if it weren’t there, and it surely goes unnoticed by hundreds of thousands of people, but it shows a clear understanding of users’ intentions and acts on them. If you’re increasing the wiper activation frequency, it’s because the rain has picked up and you not only want the windshield cleared more quickly in the future, but you probably want it cleared now as well. After all, if the rain hadn’t built up on the windshield you’d have no reason to make the wipers go faster. Somebody recognized that and made sure that that desire, no matter how subtle, would be met.

The takeaway from this odd little post is hopefully that next time you are implementing a feature, think about not just what the user is doing, but why they’re doing it. If you do, you may be able to not only meet their expectations, but exceed them.