As former researchers in a psychological study of adolescent cigarette smoking, we found that the young people we surveyed were not focused on the long-term negative effects of smoking, such as cancer, but instead on the short-term benefits, like social acceptance and stress relief. Similarly, developers often do not consider the long-term issues that can arise from engineering-centric design paradigms, resulting in poor user experiences that are costly to market, build, and support.

By focusing on short-term immediate positives associated with usability, human factors, design thinking, and user experience, we can help developers and organizations understand the value of investing in user research and design that aligns with users' mental models, workflows, and needs. This approach can reduce development costs, training and documentation costs, and support costs, while also improving user satisfaction, efficiency, and effectiveness.