I have a friend who is an awesome marketing and website coach (if you are reading this blog post, I am sure you know who you are). One of my favorite parts of his presentation is where he outlines the user experience in terms of a website, and shares that the first five seconds of a users experience on your website is simply to get you five more seconds of attention. Every element of a website needs to have a purpose, or maybe it shouldn’t be there.

What if we treated our new meetings and interactions with the same rules of interaction? The first five minutes of our discussion are the basis for me giving you permission to have five more minutes of my time. What if we had a stopwatch, that kept resetting in these intervals, and at any one of them when you’ve had enough it was okay to walk away? How many of your conversations would end early? How much time are we spending non concerned about the user experience as it pertains to our in person interaction? I bet we would show much more value on our time and that of others if we treated our in person interactions as unique user experiences with the same permissions.

Interesting concept. If you got to the end of this post, I’ve held you for five of these user experience web intervals, which I believe is a great accomplishment in itself. What is your measure of the user experience, both online, and in person?