If you sit down to watch a documentary and realize, about ten minutes in, that it’s actually a feature film, everything about it feels off until you shift into a different mode.
Walk into a new doctor’s office, and it might take a few minutes to realize they’re not the kind of doctor you’re used to. Perhaps they focus on selling procedures or pills or treatments–the sort of remedies you might have been comfortable buying in a different setting, but right here, right now, it doesn’t feel right.
A hotel without a lobby might have rooms that are sufficiently quiet, clean and convenient, but because they skipped a signalling device, it takes a second to switch gears… In fact, we might never get settled in this new place.
When we create a product or service, we have the chance to invest in our genre signals. The interactions, sounds and tropes that let our customers know what to expect. Many of them are dated or seem to have low utility, but we ignore their value at our own risk. Confusing your customers can be expensive.
Genre can be a generous signalling device. When you invest in telling us what to expect, you get a chance to keep a promise.