This is a philosophy of minimizing the computational burden you put on others from Algorithms to Live By.
Many problems we deal with on a day to day basis are computationally hard or intractable. It is mathematically impossible to resolve your busy schedule satisfactorily. When we interact with others, we should strive to make our interactions with them easy. Don’t add additional computation requirements into their life. This makes sense with a lot of small things I try to do at work
- Don’t just say hi, say what you need
- Offer a suggested meeting time
- Add context to your questions
The lack of computational kindness also rears its head with “what do you want for dinner?“. The reality is that we all probably have a weak preference. When we try to be socially correct, we make this problem worse. We try to guess what the other people want and get into recursive speculation. Then we can end up doing things no one wants to do thinking everyone wants to do them.
Conventional etiquette and computational kindness diverge in these social scenarios. To try and help resolve:
- State your weak preference - I’m inclined to X, what do you think?
- Reduce options - pick between these couple places instead of a dozen options
- When scheduling, offer a concrete date/time
I like computational kindness as a design lens too. Search for ways that you can lessen the cognitive burden that your users experience.