When you love someone you have no control, when you want something on the internet you want it NOW, it's a somewhat similar feeling but in the latter case, our client will lose money from actual sales if the implementation fails successfully.
We need a hero.
Sometimes the UX designers will not save that situation, sometimes they have to work with the engineering team on deeper more technical issues that maybe they've resolved during their experience in some other company and all you have to do is seek advice about it, sometimes you'll have to apply some solution in a custom manner and at some rare cases you'll have to build something from the ground up.
It is easy to implement, but is it better?
It is as common as the Sun that rises from the East and sets in the West that the web is full of odd functionality that in practical terms seems outdated but they do indeed work fine, on a technical level 10 dropdowns are simpler than a search implementation of multiple services that return multiple sets of data or files or both, one would say that it is a very common occurrence for a user to see multiple pages of data entry functions instead of a well-balanced search or a form wizard that can group a chaotic situation decently.
Adderall or a better design?
With a simple search for our average user we can identify that the average focus span is around 8 seconds, SEO research showed us that in the first 4 seconds, users have already formed an opinion of our website and even on that scale the first second is a crucial part, considering that with age and time (in a date format measuring with average attention span) that passes average attention span gets worse, therefore we have an ongoing epic battle with time/latency itself, and not many can claim different considering that we're already at the age of Instagram stories and TikTok timelines, I guess that it gets worse because of our everyday habits with social media.
A glass half full.
The glass is indeed half full rather than half empty despite all the challenges, there is a list of things we can do and although the analysis of such a list can go from shapes to colours to features that are tight with cloud products and more a synopsis of the situation could be phrased in a sentence...
«You DONT have to do that extra Click.»
Measuring in clicks can be quite effective because our refined architecture can teach us that if it's easier on a technical deadline-pressured implementation way that doesn't mean it's always the better solution, not when you deal with non-professional customers on the public web that is, the main difference between a professional vs a non-professional/everyday customer is that the first category is obliged to go through on whatever interface your sick horror story of a mind implemented,
For a Bonus Story: Click the interface image
the other guy is a king, and you're going to lose your head in less than 4 seconds.
The only way to save your head is to make him buy your product as fast as possible and then provide utility services on it through other means, people say that the longer a customer stays on a website is a good indicator of the website, that's not a lie but it won't apply for all situations like e-commerce websites, social media wants the user to stay hooked while anything that is not free has a big risk for the client to get confused and bail without an actual sale, that's why the save for later button got implemented and it's a great feature that aims to handle that exact confusion.
Is that confusion serviceable by that feature alone?
I think that it is to a certain extent, but it would be even better if we could avoid that confusion in the first place instead of handling it, by measuring with clicks you can get the customer as fast as possible to the end of the road, and that's good for everyone, I do believe that extra promotion of products belongs to the marketing department and the ad campaigns, not inside of your UX space, if you abuse your UX you're risking confusion and considering the average focus span out there it's bad news for people that want to play games.