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For mass market products, maybe. What about photoshop? music production software? what if your customers are developers and your product is a software library?
by hashmal 9y ago
For mass market products, maybe. What about photoshop? music production software? what if your customers are developers and your product is a software library?
In many cases there is an inherent complexity to a product, and it warrants some learning curve. Removing the need for documentation often removes power and depth.
Funnily, now that many products are like this, the opposite trend is surfacing, and in some niches you have customers who love reading manuals. It becomes part of the user experience.
- kaens 9y agoAbleton (music prod software) takes an approach to learnability that works well -- by default there's a dedicated UI element that shows documentation for whatever you're mousing over. It doesn't remove the need to read docs, especially for people who are new to DAWs, but it does alleviate a lot of the intimidation factor and initial learning curve that can come with needing to find what you need to read in a manual for a complex piece of software.
- hashmal 9y agoI know Ableton Live very well, and yes it's a very good example of hard stuff done right. But I wouldn't include it in the list of "apps that are so user friendly that you don't need to read the docs". (that's not a complaint)