What a Turkish Barber can teach you about great UX

I didn’t ask for the neck massage. That’s the whole point. You sit down for a trim. Somewhere between the cut and the finish a hot towel lands on your face and your shoulders get worked over without a word. None of it was on the menu. None of it was requested. It was exactly right. I keep coming back to that visit because most of what made it good maps onto things I try to do in my own work. The massage you didn’t ask for. The barber reads you. He clocks the tension in your shoulders and acts on it before you’d think to mention it. He isn’t waiting for a brief. Good products do the same thing. They handle what you were about to need before you reach for it. The address that fills itself in. The setting that’s already correct because the product noticed what you did last time. The skill isn’t doing more. It’s doing the right thing at the right moment. A barber who massaged your shoulders for twenty minutes would be a worse barber, not a better one. Anticipation is a scalpel. You earn…