Of course, that’s not all that customers will invest. But experience across many product and service categories shows that if customers can make some progress in that first six seconds, they will allocate more time and energy to making use of the product or feature. 

This is a corollary of the maxim: no one ever got rich by “educating” their customers. If our customers need much education to use our products/services, that’s a problem for us, not them.

The First Six Seconds is a lens that helps us to structure our thinking about an essential part of user experience (UX). Quite simply, this rule of thumb is that for every six months of our work on a feature of a product/service, we can expect new users to give it six seconds of effort. Naturally, this leads to parsimony in feature rollouts and lower friction between user and product.

Of course, that’s not all that customers will invest. But experience across many product and service categories shows that if customers can make some progress in that first six seconds, they will allocate more time and energy to making use of the product or feature. 

This is a corollary of the maxim: no one ever got rich by “educating” their customers. If our customers need much education to use our products/services, that’s a problem for us, not them. 

Farshad Nayeri

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First Six Seconds.pdf

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The First Six Seconds is a lens that helps us to structure our thinking about an essential part of user experience (UX). Quite simply, this rule of thumb is that for every six months of our work on a feature of a product/service, we can expect new users to give it six seconds of effort. Naturally, this leads to parsimony in feature rollouts and lower friction between user and product.