Following a recent media feature that included insights from our CEO & Founder, Ravi Sawhney, this perspective expands on the implications of automation in fast food and retail environments. As brands introduce self-service systems to increase efficiency, the underlying value exchange is shifting, with customers taking on more responsibility while expectations continue to rise.

This article explores why efficiency alone does not define a successful experience, how subtle changes in effort and interaction impact perception, and where trust begins to erode. It highlights the importance of designing not just for operational performance, but for human response, where adoption, satisfaction, and long-term value are ultimately determined.

When Automation Breaks the Experience: The Hidden Risk of Self-Service Design

Type

Date

Publication

Read the Full Article

The Shift Customers Feel Immediately

Automation isn’t the issue.

The issue is how it changes the experience.

A recent article featuring Ravi Sawhney highlighted a growing shift in fast food: customers are being asked to do more, while paying more.

At first glance, automation promises efficiency. Faster ordering. Shorter lines. Lower operational costs.

But that’s not how people evaluate experiences.

They evaluate value.

As Ravi noted, “What’s changing here is the value exchange. Customers are doing more of the work while paying more. People feel that immediately.”

The Shift Most Companies Miss

Most automation strategies are built around optimization, focusing on speed, throughput, and cost reduction. These are measurable and easy to justify from a business perspective, but they are not how customers actually experience a system.

Customers are not thinking about operational efficiency or evaluating labor models. Instead, they are asking a much simpler question:

Does this feel worth it?

That judgment is not analytical; it is instinctive. It is formed quickly based on how much effort is required, how clear the process feels, and how the interaction makes them feel overall.

When customers are asked to navigate more steps, make more decisions, or take on tasks that were previously handled for them, their perception of value begins to shift. This can happen even if the system is technically faster or more efficient.

Effort is not neutral. People feel it, and they factor it into how they evaluate an experience.

When effort increases without a corresponding increase in perceived value, something begins to break. Not at an operational level, but at an emotional one. That is where friction builds and trust starts to erode.

When Convenience Stops Feeling Convenient

There is a point where convenience crosses a line.

What once felt simple and intuitive begins to require more attention and effort. Ordering becomes navigating through screens and options. Speed becomes dependent on self-service. Ease shifts into responsibility.

Individually, these changes may seem minor. Together, they reshape how the experience is perceived.

At that point, the interaction no longer feels like a benefit. It starts to feel like work.

As Ravi explained, “At a certain point, convenience stops feeling convenient and starts feeling like responsibility.”

That shift is subtle, but it is critical. It marks the moment when customers begin to reassess the value of the experience, not based on efficiency, but on how it feels to engage with it.

This is where trust begins to erode, often without companies realizing it is happening.

Automation Without Meaning

Automation can make experiences faster, but speed alone does not determine whether an experience is better.

In some cases, automation removes the very elements that made the experience work in the first place. While those elements may seem small or inefficient from an operational perspective, they often carry meaning for the customer.

Human interaction is not just functional. It signals attention, care, and a sense of being understood. Even brief moments of interaction can reinforce trust and create a feeling of value that extends beyond the transaction itself.

When that layer is removed, something needs to replace it. The experience must still communicate clarity, ease, and a sense of consideration for the user.

If nothing replaces it, the interaction can begin to feel impersonal or incomplete. Even if it is technically faster, the experience lacks meaning, and efficiency alone is not enough to compensate for that loss.

The Real Design Challenge

The question is not whether to automate. Automation will continue to expand across industries, driven by efficiency, scale, and technological capability.

The real question is what is being replaced, and what is being added back.

Every element that is removed from an experience, whether it is human interaction, guidance, or a sense of ease, carries meaning for the customer. If that meaning is not intentionally replaced, the overall experience begins to degrade, even if the system itself is more advanced.

Companies that succeed will not be the ones that automate the most. They will be the ones that understand how the experience feels from the customer’s perspective and design accordingly.

Because adoption is not driven by capability alone. It is driven by perception, trust, and whether the experience feels valuable in the moment it is used.

Explore More From RKS

Ravi Sawhney Announces PA-AI: Humanizing LLMs

Predictable Magic: The $10 Billion Design Secret

Experts Warn AI Toys Raise Concerns for Children

Ready to Partner with Us?

The DreamWarmer™ is an easy-to-use, inexpensive, reusable, and washable non-electric infant warmer that is being studied in clinical trials in Rwanda by Boston Children’s Hospital to help reduce infant mortality in the developing world. Now Director of Product Development at RKS Design, Mike Elam led a team of scientists and engineers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories to develop the mat. Once heated, it holds a constant temperature for up to six hours, using a low-tech and completely harmless phase-changing wax.

The Problem

The DreamWarmer solves a pressing and complicated issue in the developing world. In low- and middle-income countries, hypothermia contributes to about one million infant deaths per year. Newborn babies, especially babies who are low birth weight or preterm or both, tend to cool to their environment’s temperature. Therefore, even in warm climates like that of sub-Saharan Africa, newborns can become dangerously cold. While it’s rare for hypothermia to be the primary cause of death, hypothermia in newborns can contribute to respiratory problems, glucose regulation, immune system function, and, most importantly growth, including brain growth, and therefore neuro-developmental outcome. This stunting of neuro-developmental growth can perpetuate the cycle of poverty.

One solution to this immense problem has been Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC). KMC is a body warming technique recommended by the World Health Organization that uses body heat from the caregiver’s chest to keep the baby warm. But KMC is not always feasible, for example, in settings where an infant needs medical care such as resuscitation or clinical instability. KMC is not available when caregivers need to do domestic chores, work, or tend to other family members.

In developed countries that can afford them, electric warmers are the standard of care, but they are costly and require training to reduce the risk of causing both hypo and hyperthermia. Poor maintenance can significantly reduce their lifespan, increasing their cost. Furthermore, electric heaters require electricity sources, which aren’t always available in developing countries.

The Solution

Mike and his team set out to design a warmer that would both complement KMC and enhance it. This use case also demanded heavy constraints: the blanket needed to be used without electricity, inexpensive, intuitive to use, requiring minimal training, easily washed, and reused with a goal of a thousand cycles.

The team modeled the design of DreamWarmer after a heating pad. Unlike a traditional heating pad, which uses water, the DreamWarmer uses a wax mattress. The wax mattress is composed of cylindrical “candles” designed to become liquid at skin temperature. This phase change material (PCM)is a precise mixture of non-toxic vegetable oils that change from solid to liquid at 37°C. Once heated, the wax mattress slides into an insulating sleeve constructed with a sturdy neoprene material that requires no attached fabric, can be easily cleaned and reused, and provides comfort and insulation to maximize the duration of heat transfer.

The product had to be scalable both in manufacturing and reach, which required Mike and his team to innovate at every level. “We had to develop a unique approach to filling our candle membrane with the phase change wax and make it a process that could be replicated simply at a local level, with minimal capital investment. It was a dimension of the design process that was absolutely critical to achieving maximum adoption by driving the cost of a unit as low as possible while supporting community economies through local manufacturing.”

How it works

The DreamWarmer had to be very easy to use and work in a variety of environments. While most communities in the developing world do not have reliable electricity, they have reliable sources of hot water typically used to drink, cook with, and bathe. As a result, Mike and his team designed it to work around hot water in six steps: 1) A caregiver boils water 2) they roll the warmer up and put it in the thermos 3) they fill the thermos with the heated water 4) they wait until the wax is completely melted about 30 minutes 5) they slide the warmer into the neoprene pad and 6) they wait 15 minutes for the mat to cool to the right temperature.

. . . .

What’s next?

The DreamWarmer is already saving lives. After being successfully studied in two pilot studies at four health centers in Rwanda, the DreamWarmer is now undergoing studies in ten hospitals in even more communities. In this new study, Boston Children’s Hospital is assessing the safety and efficacy of the DreamWarmer as an addition and enhancement to KMC. Mike Elam has been following his work closely, “there’s nothing more rewarding than applying the design process and achieving a result like this, a product that will save thousands of infants’ lives, with low enough manufacturing costs to make it accessible to even the poorest communities.” Should the trial prove successful, the DreamWarmer will see an even greater rollout across the Continent, as it continues to save lives.

Want to learn more?

Want to learn even more?

https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/d1/7a/39/a304db05210307/USD773681.pdf

https://www.globalnewborn.org/our-technology/

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03890211

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6361488/

https://www.smartpatients.com/trials/NCT03031431

http://www.puretemp.com/pcmatters/pcm-equipped-infant-warming-mat-set-for-large-scale-trial-in-rwanda