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Disrespectful Design – Users aren’t stupid or lazy

• mitko 6y ago
  Regarding the example of people mindlessly scrolling. This is also in part a result of the measured objectives/metrics by the company. When a company like Facebook over optimizes for likes and shares, as opposed to say depth of interpersonal connections or something else, then the product evolves to treat users as if they’ve no personality beyond engagement on the feed. That happens even if there is no explicit judgement passed on the users. Source: I used to work on the algorithmic newsfeed of a social media, not Fb. If you optimize for sheep, you get sheep
• ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  I guess Krug pissed this person off. I'll withdraw the comment. lexicality was correct, and I probably didn't write my thoughts well. I do believe in promptly admitting when I was wrong.
  • lexicality 6y ago
    > I guess Krug pissed this person off Why do you think that? The author seems to be lamenting that Krug's advice isn't followed more closely.
    • ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
      Good point.
  • Ozzie_osman 6y ago
    (Author here). Appreciate the correction. And yes I do love Krug and I think his thinking has been misinterpreted by many.
    • ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
      It’s a pretty emotionally-charged area. I worked for a Japanese camera manufacturer (one of their top ones), and had an up-close-and-personal relationship with the way they designed the UX of their devices. They have tremendous respect for their users, who often wrap their entire careers around the equipment. The company would often do things like make an angle just a tiny bit steeper in the handgrip; which would necessitate a great deal of re-engineering the internals, because users would report issues with the grip. But I allowed myself to read your article, colored by my own emotional cant, and I should know better. I can get a bit grumpy about what I consider the ham-handed approach to usability, practiced these days.
• Elof 6y ago
  Good design in many products does what it is intended to do for all users down to the lowest common dominator. So, sometimes you have to think about users who aren’t super intelligent and might actually be lazy. Still, the author has a point
• spacedcowboy 6y ago
  I get what the author is trying to say, and to a large extent I agree with it. But... I have to admit the first thing that came into my head after reading the title was “well actually, some of them are, dude”. There’s a reason why no-one really wants to work the hell-desk and act as the front line for user support. There’s a reason why websites like ‘Not always right’ exist. There’s a reason why Reddit has /r/TalesFromTheFrontDesk... I think it’s as much a disservice to assume that all users are enlightened angelic creatures, who only need that little pointer to go their own happy way, as it is to assume they’re all lazy and stupid. Sure, start off with the helpful approach, but shutting down people who are only there to scam a deal or make themselves a nuisance would go a long way to curbing that behaviour. Stupid, on the other hand, is something that needs to be coped with well - and good design can certainly help. Stupid needs the hand-holding, because there’s nothing the client can do to help it. “Stupid” is also often just unfamiliarity, so good hand-holding will prevent a repeat of the situation. Lazy/entitled I have no truck with. If you’re not willing to help yourself, I’m sure as hell not going to do it for you. I’d never make it past the first day in customer support...
  • tyingq 6y ago
    They may also be in a rush, and have more important things to do. That can appear to be lazy or stupid, but it isn't really. I have that attitude towards things like expense filing software. It's a nuisance that I don't want to spend time learning, and it doesn't come up often enough to learn it well. So my click stream probably looks stupid or lazy.
    • grugagag 6y ago
      I feel the same. An app shouldn’t be too complicated especially if you used different similar apps in the past and can sense the complication is unnecessary. Why spend energy and effort on something that is stupidly designed and which would probably be a one time use anyway?
  • Ozzie_osman 6y ago
    Author here. I actually agree. Cheesy (but true) anecdote: As I was writing my article this morning, there were two distractions. First, I tabbed to Facebook where I saw one of my "friends" had posted something political that was both factually incorrect and also very offensive. It reminded me of All the Bad Things, and made me doubt my argument, to the point of almost just scrapping the article. Not just because that FB post was an example of someone being stupid and lazy, but because I had mindlessly interrupted myself and tabbed to Facebook and was about to engage with that post. My second distraction was my 2-year toddler, who had just woken up and was tugging at my sleeve. And I thought about the world I want him to grow up in and the view I want him to have of it. I know I can come across as idealistic (hell, I've even gotten that as formal feedback in a performance review—but I've also gotten feedback that I'm cynical, so shrug). But honestly, one of the wonders of us as humans is that we can carry all these different capacities. We can be smart and motivated and social. We can be stupid and lazy and anti-social. All those capacities are worthy of admiration, not contempt. Technology is a great tool, we can decide where we focus it.
• swiley 6y ago
  I’d like to add that I don’t want to flick my finger down an infinite feed. It’s easy to convince me to (well it was, until I realized the psychological effects) and I might even do it for a while but eventually I’m going to be upset about it.
  • coffeefirst 6y ago
    Yes, nobody ever asked for this, it was built as a manipulative device to drive "engagement."
• cmehdy 6y ago
  Agreed. I seem to see this sort of narrative of users being stupid as less and less prevalent (as opposed to 5-10 years ago) but it seems to still remains in some people's minds, although I'd like to think not in the majority. If discussions like this one can make those people's opinions change even just a bit then it's a net benefit. The cure to this sort of thinking is two spoonfuls of empathy: one for others (truly putting ourselves into other people's shoes or lack thereof), and another one for ourselves (understanding our own issues better). You might think that a GUI is a waste of your time because you can use CLIs, yet non-intuitive flags or help messages lead you to google time and time again the same awk or sed command (or whatever else). You're always someone else's stupid. Meet people where they're at, not where you're at. That is by the way true for users as much as it is for your manager, your sales team, and so on.
  • rhacker 6y ago
    Brings this to mind: https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
    • chrisweekly 6y ago
      One of my all-time favorites.
• rhacker 6y ago
  I've often seen this attitude doesn't apply to just "users". Indeed there are many people that come from college backgrounds that generally treat "the public" as stupid. To get into the good graces of such people you have to agree with them. When wading through the actual issues "the public" has, individually, you'll find that the issues are actually real. Usually some un-turned nugget of wisdom that was not applied in a very specific way. Many people learn things in a variety of ways. Different learning methods don't make people stupid either.
  • whatsmyusername 6y ago
    Considering the current approval number for tubbs-in-chief, the general public are stupid. Or actively malicious, which I ran into consistently when doing internal support for a company that employed a lot of pharmacists. There are plenty of even well paid people who are just miserable and will intentionally break things for self gain or even no reason whatsoever. People are trash. I've made a career out of designing to accomidate that fact.
• luckylion 6y ago
  This strikes me as semantics. I've never heard that anybody says "users are stupid" in a truly derogatory way. It's a shortcut for a long-winded explanation that you'll deal with a lot of different people, some of whom will barely understand what's happening. An example I like is Amazon's question feature. If you buy a product and somebody else has a question about it, Amazon will mail you and ask whether you can answer the question. When you browse Amazon, you'll notice that quite a few people don't understand what's happening at all. They believe that some person has directed a question at them personally, and feel compelled to answer, even if they have no idea. Amazon being Amazon lets those answers go live, and so you'll see answers like "Dear Mr. Doe, unfortunately this was a gift for my nephew, so I cannot tell you how large the item is compared to a banana". Others are using it for support, I've seen things like "Hi Amazon, I don't know. Can you please tell me how to find more from manufacturer X?" "Users are stupid" is short and catchy, and it beats holding an hour long explanation session each time you want to remind somebody that they're not designing something to be used by people like them, but by society at large. And many users are, in regard to this technology, stupid. Is anyone actually judging them, saying they're horrible people or something similar?
• j45 6y ago
  The purpose of UX in my mind is to be able to constantly create beginners that can become engaged and advanced users. Knowing your audience, and how to create beginners is critical. Helping them get up to speed as quickly as possible is the goal, not assuming they are stupid or lazy. This article was plausible for me, up until it might not account for users who do not have digital literacy or capabilities like the writer's own. There might be a bit of a blind spot there, ironically. Many of our major services started the same way.. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram all started as very simple services for people to learn new digital experiences and interactions. With these social media digital interactions as a foundation, maybe it's possible to place more complex initial interactions in front of some users.. but I feel that the digital alienation of people is real and one of the things that may be fueling the divide in society when it comes to access to opportunity. This post by Google's CEO articulates the alienation that not helping create beginners can fuel: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/digital-technology-must-empower-next-generation-workers-not-alienate-them-ncna838806 https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/digital-technology-mus...
• callmeal 6y ago
  The best description I heard from an old boss was "Users may be inexperienced or stuck in their methods, but they are capable."
• GekkePrutser 6y ago
  Yeah it's really the Apple attitude. "We'll lock everything down so you can't screw it up". First with iOS and now they're bringing this model with the Mac (on Big Sur you can't even edit config files in /etc anymore, I've been told). I really hate that attitude, I feel the user should always have the final say in everything that happens on their device. Defaults are fine, locking stuff down is not. There should always be an override for the power user.
  • jamil7 6y ago
    > on Big Sur you can't even edit config files in /etc anymore, I've been told Huh? I'm running the Big Sur beta and just edited my hosts file minutes ago. I get what you're saying and kind of agree on some fronts but macOS has never really gotten in my way as a technical user and I can run whatever I want on it, I even dual booted Arch linux on this machine for a while. iOS is a whole different story though.
    • GekkePrutser 6y ago
      Ok great if it is possible. Like I said I didn't try it myself. I don't have my testing Mac due to lack of office access. I was told by people on ##apple on Freenode that on Big Sur it's no longer possible to change flags in /etc/ssh/sshd_config for example. But as long as this is possible it's fine. For me that would be a dealbreaker as in work we're not allowed to have SSH daemons with password auth and they often scan for them. PS: I believe (also need to test) that on models with T2 chip you can boot linux but you can't access the internal SSD then. This is really one of those things where I'd want to see an override. It's really hard to test right now :( I have a pile of test MacBooks but they're all locked in the office. But even on iOS.. It's too locked down IMO. I don't use it for this reason, for one I need full NFC access for my Yubikeys (OpenPGP mode). I really miss stuff like that.
      • lexicality 6y ago
        I don't think OSX has ever supported modifying /etc/ssh/sshd_config? I've always had to modify /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist.
• solinent 6y ago
  Design your software for your users. They might be lazy. They might be eager. They might be both. Certainly, an app for those struggling with depression should be structured differently than one for those struggling to beat their weightlifting personal record.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• einpoklum 6y ago
  > Firstly, products should definitely be as simple as possible. Absolutely not. Simplicity is _beneficial_ - as the author argues and assumes - but it is not the alpha and the omega of product and interface design. When something has both simple and advanced uses, both a default mode of use but also complex customizability, the design needs to balance the extent to which it caters to the different levels of use-cases complexity. Just simplifying everything all the way makes the complex uses entirely impossible or effectively impossible; and medium-complexity uses cumbersome and difficult. > Because I respect users’ time, not because I look down on their intelligence. The author of this piece (and perhaps the author of "Don't make me think", which I haven't read) respects only the simple desires of the majority of users. S/he does not respect the complex desires and needs of minorities of users, nor the potential for the majority-user to refine and develop their needs and desires.
  • wootest 6y ago
    Sounds like you're re-making the arguments in the article without realizing it. No amount of work will make the inherently complex less complex, but doesn't have to be more complicated than it has to be. That's what "as simple as possible" means. If you have to peel down a strange interpretation of a problem or a misguided attempt to "dumb it down" before you get to the complexity, it's definitely more complicated. Over-simplification is pretending the complex doesn't exist, or chipping away at some parts until it looks simple, or straight-up disbelieving that there are complex needs and forgoing them. I haven't read "Don't make me think", but I have read other books by the same author and his general message is that everything should be clear and approachable such that you can tell what things are and spend your energy actually solving the problem or accomplishing what you want to accomplish. > The author of this piece (and perhaps the author of "Don't make me think", which I haven't read) respects only the simple desires of the majority of users. S/he does not respect the complex desires and needs of minorities of users, nor the potential for the majority-user to refine and develop their needs and desires. This reading pairs poorly with this quote from the article: "And I’ve found that good products, ones that respect their users, give them more control." If the author really was out to knee-cap software, that's an odd sentiment to hold. I think you're in agreement with the author, but somehow take offense at the word "simple", maybe taking it as meaning "stripped down in function". There are certainly a lot of products, services, companies and people who take it to mean that.
• whoisjuan 6y ago
  I’m going to be honest. I have many times said, “users are stupid, if we don’t make this obvious they won’t get it”. Now. Am I really saying that they users are stupid? Of course no. Saying that a user is stupid is just an assertion to say that you really have to design as if users were highly incapable of inferring complex mechanics or interactions, because the reality is that there’s always a subset of users that legitimately won’t get it. I get what the author is saying though. Referring to a user as stupid is derogatory, but when I have personally used that phrasing I always include myself as part of that group of users. I don’t know anyone that uses it differently. It’s us collectively as software users that we are stupid. It’s not a direct insult to an specific user or cohort of users. It’s just a token to assert that your software should be “stupidly” easy to use. If someone has used this phrasing beyond it’s rhetorical meaning, then they don’t have the empathy to design software. Simple. I just believe that nobody uses this phrasing to personally insult another person, and that we shouldn’t be focusing in such small trivialities. Designing software has more complex ethical implications than trying to poke holes at your communication style. Again. Most people that use this phrasing do it to assert a point. I don’t think I have ever seen this phrasing used in anything formal. This is just a desk phrase to say that a particular thing is too complex. Seems really unnecessary to even argue around this, honestly.
  • lexicality 6y ago
    > Am I really saying that they users are stupid? Of course no. > If someone has used this phrasing beyond it’s rhetorical meaning, then they don’t have the empathy to design software. Simple. If you assume that engineers are also (rhetorically) stupid, then if they regularly don't realise that it's a metaphor does that not mean we need to change the way we communicate to help them understand the the system of design?
    • PaulStatezny 6y ago
      Exactly. It can be harmful to your culture and the perspective of people on the team even if it's implied to be a rhetorical device.
  • TeMPOraL 6y ago
• sime2009 6y ago
  A better model for thinking of users is to realise that they are not stupid, just busy and distracted. From an app point of view you can count yourself lucky if you get even 10% of their attention at any given time. Users aren't thinking about your app when they use it. That person in MSWord isn't thinking about the ribbon bar. They are thinking about how to address that new prospective customer. That person in Excel isn't thinking about cells either. They are thinking about whether Robin in R&D is going to get the figures for Q2 to them in time. Users have tasks to concentrate on. They don't have the attention left over to deal with your app's crappy UI.
  • jwr 6y ago
    > A better model for thinking of users is to realise that they are not stupid, just busy and distracted. I'd put it differently. Realize that your app is not the center of the world. Your users have things to do, and using your app is a small fraction of their life. Even though it might be your baby and you might be spending all of your waking ours thinking about your app, user perspective is different.
    • nikki93 6y ago
      Maybe the user is like a person walking down the street and your app is your kid with girl scout cookies boxes it's trying to sell, and you're helping it out. :) And it's not about the money as much as the app growing up, or something.
    • tremon 6y ago
      Or, more bluntly: realize that your app is a tool, not a goal. Tools should be predictable, reliable, and easy to use correctly.
      • grugagag 6y ago
        And intuitive! Since apps are like a blackbox to the user, they shouldn’t do things that make the user hesitate or get confused. With feature creep most apps become an unmanageable piece of mess
• tannman 6y ago
  was anything said in this article?
• rriepe 6y ago
  I use the three Ds: Dumb, drunk or distracted. I don't think this article really gets at respect, though. It's more like denial. Some of your users are lazy and stupid and you should respect that and design for that. Pretending that someone isn't the thing they are isn't respect. Lazy people exist. Stupid people exist. After some threshold of growth they're going to be using your app too.
• platz 6y ago
  Seems like a distinction without a difference. ok, so you've created a model X for the emotional/mental state of the user. This article is heavy on the psychology, and very light on any actual design advice. Tell me how this actually influences the design in contrast to what one would design if what you are arguing against was true.
• golergka 6y ago
  Any discussion like this has no meaning unless you first design what users are you talking about. People are more than willing to invest a lot of time and effort into learning your product if they use it professionally and this is going to make them much more productive in the long run. The samer person can build their own custom Emacs distributive with Evil mode, and at the same time not figure out how to use your web app made out of couple of forms. Because she needs Emacs for her work, but it's you who's trying to convince her to use the web app.
• karaterobot 6y ago
  I designed software for quantum computing researchers. They were clearly not stupid people, and the design was completely tailored to their needs, but in early iterations of the design, they still struggled with a lot of the same things users of an ordinary website would have struggled with: trouble orienting, trouble finding the primary actions in a screen, etc. It wasn't a catastrophe, we just observed them and fixed the problems. But, I realized that I'd taken for granted that they were "experts users", not dummies, and that they would easily figure this stuff out. Heck, they might even appreciate not having their hands held! Unsafe assumption. From this experience, I took away the lesson that users may not be stupid , but you won't go wrong pretending they are, and taking the same precautions you would if they were.
• caconym_ 6y ago
  If the primary goals of your product's design are engagement and ad revenue, of course you're going to chafe at the fact that users don't want to sit comatose in front of screens all day making you money in whichever way you've found is the most efficient. And, of course, when you notice this sort of ~~disengagement~~ behavior, you're going to try and figure out how to trick the user into doing what you want. These days it seems just as likely that some other EvilCorp™ with more money than you has done a better job hijacking your potential users' attentions as that your users really do have something better to do. But either way, I think the "focus on the user" kind of mantras painted on the walls of so many tech offices have been twisted into something horribly exploitative or beaten into irrelevance by rote repetition without thought. So many "products" being "sold" to users these days aren't really products at all, in the sense that if they do offer the user something of real value it's almost by accident. There is no value, absolutely none, placed on building a quality product for its own sake. If you're all tangled up in this mess and "users are stupid and lazy" is what lets you sleep at night, I don't blame you.
  • TeMPOraL 6y ago
    We could just go all the way in and say "users are not sentient [therefore we can exploit them to our heart's content]". Related is my issue with most "data-driven" companies these days. Extensive telemetry and A/B testing isn't "being user centered", it's just the feedback leg of the control system over your users that you're designing to mine them for all they're worth.
  • nicbou 6y ago
    As someone with ADHD, I really struggle with this. I spend a lot of time turning off features that were built to distract me. Notification badges, unread item counts, related content, news feeds put in places where they don't belong etc. Some simple tasks are made deliberately difficult by this. For example, why is it so hard to get just the weather, without any bullshit?
    • bittercynic 6y ago
      FWIW, if there is a government website for the information you're after, it is likely to have way less bullshit that the ad-supported alternatives. In the US, weather.gov is far from the worst place to get weather information.
• ftrsprvln 6y ago
  UX is often thought of as solving an issue "for the user", which dismisses or redirects attention from the communication problem onto the individual. No one reframes it, nor should they, as solving engineer/developer "laziness or stupidness". Reading "The Design Of Everyday Things" made me more aware and empathetic, from both perspectives, when I can't find the right button to click or have to think about which way a door will open.
• 12xo 6y ago
  I call this simplifying madness, Fisher Pricing.
• chefandy 6y ago
  After reading this design critique, I looked up the author's bio and I'm unsurprised to see he's not a designer, but a long-time developer/dev manager. As a mid-career developer and art school trained designer, I encounter a lot of exclusively technical people who think they completely understand the product design process because technical pursuits themselves involve some amount of design, and they help implement the decisions and plans made by the design team. Sometimes I encounter well-reasoned external input that helps break down echo chambers and challenge group think; I don't think this article falls into that category. Within the single example given— infinite scroll traps, specifically citing Facebook— the author did not present any real evidence that those designs were even partially driven by contempt for users' intelligence. It's a pretty controversial assertion that he treated as self-evident. Also, the author citing Facebook as a prime example of low-agency infinite scroll traps when services like TikTok and Instagram are far better examples hints he might not be very familiar with the current design landscape which he is critiquing. Lots of people— mostly designers— have presented very valid critiques of infinite scroll. Generally, the goal of infinite scroll is to reduce the cognitive barriers to staying engaged with a product by having content just appear as soon as users look for it. It's incredibly effective. Too effective. Removing these natural pause points removes one of the ways users subconsciously gauge how much time they've spent on an activity, and removes the places that users tend to insert natural stopping points. For example, when reading a book, flipping pages and passing chapters both gives us a general sense of how long we've spent reading without having to manually track it, and gives us a nice place to hit the pause button and put the book down. I agree that infinite scroll is disrespectful to the user and poor design because it favors business needs over many users' need to not get sucked into scrolling through TikTok for a few hours without even realizing it. Overall, this article seems to argue against a design perspective I've never once seen a designer present. (Support? Maybe.) I've not once seen anybody justify infinite scroll by saying users are too dumb to use something more complicated. Either this guy has worked for some companies with seriously bad design departments, or he's a bit overconfident in his layman's interpretation of designers' perspective and intent.
  • Ozzie_osman 6y ago
    I'm sorry you seemed to have interpreted this article as a critique of designers from an "exclusively technical" person. I'm sure this wasn't your intention, but some of your choice of words supports what I think is a pretty harmful idea in software development: that technical people aren't qualified to critique or discuss product design. Ultimately, you are right that I am not a designer, but I've actually worn product management and business hats in the past. Still I don't claim to think I "completely understand the product design process". Ultimately, this was an article I wrote and posted to a primarily technical website. It was primarily intended for technical people, but would hopefully be relevant to anyone involved in building software products. > the author citing Facebook as a prime example of low-agency infinite scroll traps when services like TikTok and Instagram are far better examples hints he might not be very familiar with the current design landscape which he is critiquing. This felt a bit presumptuous. I am familiar with Instagram and TikTok, but I chose Facebook as the prime example because they were the _first_ massively popular site to implement this type of interface. > Overall, this article seems to argue against a design perspective I've never once seen a designer present. I'm somewhat envious of you, then. I've unfortunately worked with product managers, designers, and engineers who have said that users are stupid. Sometimes, it's well-meaning and in a sort of abstract form, meaning "we should make it so simple that even an idiot could use it". But often, it's unfortunately quite literal. > he's a bit overconfident in his layman's interpretation of designers' perspective and intent Again, this was more of a critique of software development than of designers' intent in particular.
• yoavmmn 6y ago
  I can't but notice the name of the blog and wonder if it's in any way related to "The Office"
  • Ozzie_osman 6y ago
    Ha, good catch! I'm a big fan of The Office. That said, the name of the blog is more about me reminding myself not to take myself too seriously :)
• edejong 6y ago
  Edsger Wybe Dijkstra in 1982 on "users" [1] (please read the rest of the EWD as it is too much to paste here): "The computer “user” isn’t a real person of flesh and blood, with passions and brains. No, he is a mythical figure, and not a very pleasant one either. A kind of mongrel with money but without taste, an ugly caricature that is very uninspiring to work for. He is, as a matter of fact, such an uninspiring idiot that his stupidity alone is a sufficient explanation for the ugliness of most computer systems. And oh! Is he uneducated! That is perhaps his most depressing characteristic. He is equally education-resistant as another equally mythical bore, “the average programmer”, whose solid stupidity is the greatest barrier to progress in programming. " [1] https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD618.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/E...
• draw_down 6y ago
  It’s a mistake to give people too much credit too. Of course you shouldn’t assume people are stupid but I don’t think it’s so simple with assuming laziness. One of the great books about UX is called “Dont make me think”, and there is a reason why.
• Vaslo 6y ago
  One issue I see here is that some of us just don’t want all that control. When i use a new tool, I want it to work. If I see tools mentioned here, I see a lot of people looking for “super duper mega ultimate fine point control 259”. I don’t want a company spending time on the 5% of genius computer users or experts. I want things to work. I don’t want 90 buttons on my ps5 controller. I’m ok if I can’t do the crazy Uber loop you get 3rd place in the world. I want fewer buttons and will trade that for less control. Many on here will seriously disagree with, but almost my entire corporate office won’t.
  • DoingIsLearning 6y ago
    But that is exactly the point the author makes with the quote from Alan Kay "simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible". He is not advocating complexity he is advocating that the possibility of "power user" complexity should be there. An example of this used to be :( Firefox, you can use the browser from the start unchanged but the possibility of complex addons and customizing 'about:config' is there. The point that annoys a lot of users is the 'google UX' type of decision arrogance, that enforces users to operate in a padded room with no sharp objects. That mindset of "we know better than you how you should want to use this app", is what I suspect frustrates a lot of users.
    • TeMPOraL 6y ago
      I'm starting to use the term "space for user to grow" instead of "power user features" - because that's what power user features are. Power users aren't born, they're made through repeat exposure and their own desire to solve their problems faster/better. This implies that these features don't need to be up front, or conflicting with simpler, streamlined methods. But they need to be there, and be easily discoverable.
• gridlockd 6y ago
  I am lazy and I reserve the right to be stupid. N=1
  • scollet 6y ago
    Good thing laziness drives developer productivity.
• ChuckMcM 6y ago
  I really resonated with this post, I share a lot of its perspectives. And if the author is reading, self-determinism is exceptionally useful when raising children[1]. And if there is anything that my life has taught me, it is that potentially everyone responds differently to the same stimulus. There are few "universal" things about people and so generalizations are difficult if not impossible with regard to how people will react. Understanding that can help avert the 'dual user stories' quagmire that some products find themselves in. Imagine your text editor product development team is half hard-core vim users and half hard-core emacs users. Maybe you put together this team because you wanted a product that appealed to all text editor users, maybe it was just thrown together, however such a team was formed, my experience is that it will produce a substandard product that will not appeal to anyone. This seems to happen because the conflicting visions of "a good editor" within the team seep into the product and the users of the result are often confused as different parts of the same product seem to have different philosophies about how the product should work. That said, I'd love a product like 'Monarch Money' that was a) not subscription based and b) not cloud hosted :-). [1] Anecdotally of course, just a survey of my general social group of which roughly 40% chose to have children and pretty much half took a "self determination" route in child raising and the other half took a "guided/trained" route.
  • PaulStatezny 6y ago
    Regarding [1], would you be willing to expand on what you mean by a "self determinism" versus "guided/trained" parenting approaches? Thanks ahead from one parent to another.
    • ChuckMcM 6y ago
      Sure, nothing too deep. With the understanding that this is just peers and acquaintances, not some referred psychology paper or anything. Among my friends, there exists generally two very broad schools of thought with respect to raising children. In one school of thought, which I relate to self determinism and is how I raised my kids, is that as a parent you have no idea what the "best way" is for your kids, they aren't you. As a result, parenting is a process consisting of three things; Teaching your children the underlying reasons and rationale of the world. Sharing with your kids the choices you made, why you made them, and what you learned. And finally, helping them explore different things while giving them a framework for capturing any new learning or understanding that their exploration yielded. The other school of thought, which I think of "You'll do better than me because I'll tell you how to be a better me." is about using your understanding of the world and your experiences in it to create a path for your child that will be more successful (or as successful) as your path. Parenting in that case focuses mostly on setting the direction for your children, giving them goals to help them evaluate how far they have moved along the path, and correcting them when they stray from the chosen path. Both styles fail at the extremes. For self determinism that would be completely disengaged "observer" parents, and for guided path, that would be over functioning "helicopter" parents. Parenting is a big job, but you have to remember that you will be lucky if you to spend a total of five years worth of time being with them[1]. Planned path parenting fails kids who are completely different than their parents (in my experience) and that situation can be expressed by people who graduate from college with a degree in X and then completely change their life after they have run off the end of the list of goals their parents gave them. Anyway, my 0.02 for what it is worth. [1] Assuming at age 18 they go off to college, from about 3 yrs to 5 yrs you get to spend all day with them, then half days, then maybe a quarter day + weekends, and then mostly weekends until they are gone. Chronologically it is nearly 2 decades by in terms of face to face time, especially time where you can talk and really share ideas and thoughts, it is incredibly short.
• masswerk 6y ago
  > "And I’ve found that good products, ones that respect their users, give them more control. Bad products take away control." Thank you for this. Also, even better products have ways to signal how they are providing control. Sadly, UIs have reduced the means of doing so in a standardised, immediately accessibly way over the years.
• danmg 6y ago
  The Windows 95 MFC style toolbars and menu, and everyone who inspired and cloned that, were probably at the peak of general UX usability. If you had to take an MFC application and "modernize it" a lot of the functionality that would be staring right at you on the main screen of the application would be buried 10 menus deep in a hamburger menu. Doing something, other than the most frequently used operation which would be on the application's main screen, now requires remembering which path it is in a series of menus which cannot be on the screen at the same time.
• baxtr 6y ago
  > So what explains the rise of products like Facebook, which have gotten a large part of humanity mindlessly scrolling through feeds of what can most easily be described as garbage content? That’s what I think of LinkedIn every time I log in to read messages and accidentally start reading the god damn feed of utter business non-sense.
• jrockway 6y ago
  At some level, I wonder how possible it is for your bespoke software product to be as usable as a door. A door is simpler than most software, and we've built the same exact door millions of times. We may be spending a lot of time on design when no design will ever help anything. I am instead going to propose what I think software should aim for. 1) Software should be safe to explore. Trying things out is how you learn. Accumulating learning is how you become productive. With that in mind, you should never allow the user run a command that creates a situation where they can't revert to the previous state. When one wrong move can erase hours of work, your users will never become experts. (Historically, software has been absolutely awful here. I think this is the number one reason why people are afraid of software -- the one UI paradigm they've learned throughout every new "UI innovation" is "one wrong move will destroy your work". So they tread carefully, and being careful is slow and painful.) 2) A user that knows the jargon that describes some command should be able to run that command by name. Teaching users the jargon can be hard, but once they've learned the word, they should be able to at least run the command. An example is watching a YouTube tutorial for some operation that was recorded a few versions ago. Sinc the tutorial was made, someone moved every menu item around (hello, Fusion 360). Now the tutorial is useless -- you know the command you want to run and how to use that command, but you have to dig around in the UI looking for it. That's a big fail. (I called out Fusion 360 for this, but they have a command search, so it's not a big deal. The search could be better, like maybe telling you how to do it faster next time ("next time, just press X"), but at least it's there. I'll also point out that Emacs does this, and even tells you the shortcut after the command is over. If a 1970s LISP app can do it, so can your whizbang Electron app.) Anyway, I'm not sure I'd understand how to use a door the first time I saw one. Normally you can't walk through walls, but with this innovation, you can. Weird! But once you see someone else use it, or someone walks you through it (literally), it's pretty easy. With software, we are creating new concepts like that several times a day. At some point, we have to accept that the user will have to try it out and learn how to use it. There is a first time for everything, after all.
  • octorian 6y ago
    > Software should be safe to explore. Trying things out is how you learn. When I was a kid, I was surrounded by computer-illiterate adults. The biggest fundamental difference between their approach and mine, was that they were "afraid to explore" and could only understand things if they were provided in the form of a prescribed set of instructions. Meanwhile, I was comfortable casually exploring, and thus gained a far better intuition for how to actually use things.
• intrepidhero 6y ago
  A favorite quote of mine from The Humane Interface: An interface is humane if it is responsive to human needs and considerate of human frailties. There is a temptation as a designer/programmer to present the world with MY PERFECT VISION of what a piece of software should be like. Nothing wrong with that, as far as experimenting with and presenting new ideas. But a mindset that produces better software is one of serving the needs of the users. Of course there is an entire profession in identifying the "needs" and studying the "users". But the mindset: "we build tools that enables users", is the first step. Far more insidious and destructive to the general computer experience has been the rise of businesses, whose entire purpose is to produce software that exploits it's users. I don't know the solution to this phenomenon but I find it repulsive and strive to avoid this software as much as I'm able. Raskin's dedication for the above book: We are oppressed by our electronic servants. This book is dedicated to our liberation. Might have been tongue in cheek then but feels disturbingly serious now.
• drewcoo 6y ago
  Yet we should call these people "users," thereby dehumanizing them? Design scolding begets design scolding. Actually, I prefer apps that allow me to not think too much. Because I am lazy.
• the__alchemist 6y ago
  I wish the author had provided more in the way of examples to ground his points. This is a broad topic that could manifest itself in different ways, some of which are more and less applicable. For example: - Ads with claims like "This single mom makes $$$ working from home, you can too!" - Clickbait news titles. (You could define "clickbait" here as the most egregious, or as the sensational nature of headlines across the industry. - More subtle, but pervasive trends manipulation like $_.99 price tags, or arranging grocery stores not for customer convenience, but to encourage them to buy more things - Even more subtle: The ubiquitous practice of advertising (Perhaps on a product webpage) the positive qualities upfront without mentioning the drawbacks or competition. Is that disrespectful, or just good business practice? - Video games puzzles designed to be easy to solve. Eg I could paraphrase some of the Portal levels with dev commentary as "We wanted to make this more challenging, but our playtesters kept getting confused, so we made the solution obvious." - Junk food manufacturers micromanaging the sugar etc content to keep the user hooked and get just the right amount of good-feelings flowing. - Restaurants loading every dish with salt. Does the article apply to all these? Maybe? They're on a spectrum, with some more clear-cut as disrespectful than others.
  • TeMPOraL 6y ago
    The article doesn't really apply to those, because it assumes UI/UX designers are only disrespectful of their users. Meanwhile, all your examples except the Portal one, are ones in which the vendor is openly malicious - they want to exploit other people, make money by making other people's life worse. There's another article to be written on those cases. One that points out these practices for what they are: immoral.
• simulo 6y ago
  I have no good idea about the origin of users as lazy. However, there is a good argument for an origin of users as stupid. And this might be the close connection of Human Computer Interaction with Cognitive Science, which understands thinking as computational. Thus, the ideal way of thinking is computer-like and diversions from this are framed as due to limitations that cause problems and need to be worked around: The user is like a limited and erratically failing computer. Gedenryd showed the problems of understanding the user and designer as thinking computationally in his PhD thesis: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/How-designers-work-making-sense-of-authentic-Gedenryd/c2f6b822b1000c28793d98954ec20d2358ab9160 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/How-designers-work-mak...
• josefrichter 6y ago
  As a product designer, I don't really see many fellow designers who would think that "users are stupid". What I do se a LOT though is designers disrespecting users' time. Many see their product as the center of the world, expecting and kinda forcing the user to spend much more time and energy with their product that is really needed.
• avindroth 6y ago
  The user and the designer have very different motives. It is no wonder that there is a significant misunderstanding. The user just wants to do what they want to do. Usually the motive is very straight-forward, and almost fleeting. A small subset of their life is affected by this product, and they can easily choose away from it. The relationship is thin. The designer not only designs for themselves, but for other people. This includes understanding the world, but also has to do with social value. What you create, in many contexts, dictates how you are viewed. The designer cannot choose away from their own product. Their relationship is very thick, complex, and personal. When the users do not understand your own brainchild, it is hard to lose your own ego. It is easier to keep your own ego and criticize those that threaten it.
• TheRealPomax 6y ago
  The first point is quite valid. The second point, however, is 100% culturally biased, and if you want to respect your users, don't assume "people value autonomy, relatedness, and competence", but instead first find out which type of cultural grounding applies to which parts of your demographic.
• Animats 6y ago
  Examples would have been helpful.
• withinboredom 6y ago
  A saying I remember from the Army: treat a man like a man, and you have a man. Treat him like a child, and you’ll have a child.
• dirtyoldmick 6y ago
  i have found that users are pretty stupid.
• FpUser 6y ago
  This is the exact quote from tech support email: "Hi. I downloaded your software. Something is wrong. What do I do?"
• allo37 6y ago
  I noticed an interesting dichotomy watching people use software I worked on: - When engineers design software, we design it with the mindset that people like using software and will appreciate all the cool features. - When non-engineers use software, they do it because they need to use it, not because they like it. They have other stuff to do. If anything it's an obstacle to what they need to do, so they interact with it as little as possible to do what they need. So, imo that line about respect for your users was spot-on. Don't get in your user's way more than you have to.
  • etripe 6y ago
    While I am a software engineer, I don't particularly identify with your self-ascribed and generalised engineers' view. Maybe I'm different because I've previously manned help desks. Maybe I'm more neurotic than you are. I always design from a perspective of having experienced a lot of truly horrible software, from websites that require spelunking to find the nugget you came to find to HR time-tracking applications that don't even allow you to define a standard week. While I do assume people like using software and all the cool features, that stance takes a backseat to thinking about how to: * fit flows to what they actually want to achieve * minimise the amount of data entry and clicks * produce meaningful messages (errors, tooltips and descriptive text) * not overwhelm the user with features irrelevant to the current view/flow. I'm by no means particularly knowledgeable in "formal" UX, but I find focusing on usability does make users appreciate your software more. YMMV
    • allo37 6y ago
      I think you're interpreting my comment too literally, I'm basically saying the same thing you are; I also try to think of software from the perspective of people who will actually be using it. All I'm saying is that I've noticed that often engineers and product-owners ( or whatever we call a boss nowadays) are out-of-touch with what their end users actually want and need.
      • etripe 6y ago
        > I think you're interpreting my comment too literally That's been known to happen :)
• fuzxi 6y ago
  I'm getting a ´name not resolved´ error on the article link. Here's a mirror: https://web.archive.org/web/20200913151725/https://somehowmanage.com/2020/09/13/disrespectful-design-users-arent-stupid-or-lazy/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200913151725/https://somehowma...
• causality0 6y ago
  I think this is a situation that's only going to get worse. Tech used to appeal to the curious and geeky because those were the only people who could get value out of using it. Now it's about the lowest common denominator. You make more money selling to a thousand fools than a hundred nerds. So the menu button goes away. The UI customization goes away. The root privilege goes away. 90% of everyday people will trade 50% of their control for 50% more convenience every time.
• ForrestN 6y ago
  To offer a slightly different frame: making products that suit people with differing cognitive ability doesn’t have to include a derogatory idea about them. Lots of wonderful people have difficulty with certain kinds of cognition. In addition to thinking through cognitive approaches to design for users with high cognitive ability we should also make simple, self evident interfaces that are therefor accessible to a broader range of users (when we can).
• skmurphy 6y ago
  I was verifying the Alan Kay quote: “Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible” and came across a Quora answer by him that provides a lot of useful context. See https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-story-behind-Alan-Kay-s-adage-Simple-things-should-be-simple-complex-things-should-be-possible https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-story-behind-Alan-Kay-s-ad... Here are two excerpts "I think I came up with this slogan at Parc during discussions wrt children, end-users, user-interfaces, and programming languages. Chuck Thacker (the genius behind the Parc hardware) also liked it and adopted it as a principle for many of his projects. So e.g. Smalltalk needed to work with children and end-users even more intuitively than (say) JOSS or Logo. But we also wanted to write the entire system in itself, so that those who were curious — especially later on — could “pop any hood” in the system and see a live program/object written in exactly the same terms as what the children were learning. Similarly, the GUI had to be easily learnable by children, but — looking ahead — it had to handle “50,000 kinds of things we hadn’t thought of done by 50,000 programmers we hadn’t met” and be as simple as possible." Alan Kay Neal Stephenson explores similar ideas in his "In the Beginning was the Command Line." "Another part of this was that we were determined to have a very easy to learn UI would also incorporate end-user programming (scripting) as a natural part of it — in other words to combine what had to be simple yet possible with the programming language with what had to be simple yet possible with the UI. The general zeitgeist against this idea — both back then and now. Basically: those artifacts that do simple things usually wall off next levels of complexity, and those that do complex things don’t do anything simply. But, given that there have been some really good examples of how to do both, it’s hard not to see most computer people as (a) not caring, or (b) being lazy or unskilled, or (c) both." Alan Kay Bonnie Nardi explores the value of this approach in "A Small Matter of Programming: Perspectives on End User Computing"
  • Ozzie_osman 6y ago
    Thanks for this. I hadn't read that Quora answer before, even though I used to work at Quora.
    • skmurphy 6y ago
      I will use it for my "Quotes for entrepreneurs collected in Sep-2020" blog post (full set going back to 2006 at https://www.skmurphy.com/blog/category/quotes/ https://www.skmurphy.com/blog/category/quotes/). I will show the basic version and this twitter-length one that incorporates context from his Quora answer: "Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible. Despite good examples to the contrary, it's unfortunate that those artifacts that do simple things usually wall off next levels of complexity, and those that do complex things don’t do anything simply." Alan Kay I like to find the original source of a good quote, one of two things often happens: the person credited did not actually say it, someone else do who has other insights to offer; the quote is part of a longer passage that adds value to the original quote.
• lostgame 6y ago
  Also, many users are not willing to accept; or even good at moving to a complete redesign of your UI/UX. Skype would be a great example of an application I think very much had it completely in the bag before the buyout and redesign. Windows 8 would be the largest example of the worst redesign of all time, and I dare say will go down in history as the worst version (hopefully!) of Windows, even beating ME; who at least didn't dare make the same rudimentary mistake. The issue is that especially older users and non-tech-savvy users in general know how to use a handful of applications a handful of ways, and that's it. I'm sure, on this forum in particular; we have been the typical example of the son/daughter that some family member calls when they need tech help. It's not about users being stupid or lazy, it's about designers having no sense of perspective and living in a bubble of the advancement of tech. We always think we need to adopt new things and it leaves most of our users in the dust as they are just not on the same level as we are, nor should we expect them to be.
• shadowgovt 6y ago
  It depends on the product. If you're designing for specialists in a space, you can make some assumptions. If you're designing for the average user, and you have little information about their preferences, style, desires, or how they approach problem solving, you have to remember that half of everyone is below average. So if you want mass appeal, you're going to have to account for that half.
  • torstenvl 6y ago
    > half of everyone is below average This is almost never true unless you have a sharply bimodal distribution. Assuming a normal distribution, ~34% are right around average (within half a standard deviation of the mean). That would mean about 33% are below average.
    • shadowgovt 6y ago
      By definition, 50% are below average in a normal distribution.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
• userbinator 6y ago
  A certain subset of developers and/or companies want to keep users stupid and lazy, so they can push the users in the direction they want without too much opposition.
• tus88 6y ago
  Users: hold my beer.
• luxurycommunism 6y ago
  The move towards hiding concepts behind icons and symbols leaving people guessing has got to be the worst trend and an insult to all users alike.
• gjvc 6y ago
  I call this quality (perhaps the opposite of the one in the article), "considerate design". Has the creator of this tool, directory layout, documentation, source code tree, help function, key-shortcut, or whatever, been considerate of the context in which this function or feature is being used and what state of mind the user is likely to be in at the moment of use?
• blackrock 6y ago
  Lol. Apple seems to think users are stupid and lazy. And they’ve sold billions of devices. Some of their designs are so minimalist for the sake of the design, that it makes their products harder to use. One good example is getting rid of keys on their MacBook keyboard. Like the printscreen key, and they replaced it with a Command-Shift-4 keystroke. I think a single printscreen button is far simpler to use. Another missing feature, is they put the Mac application menus on the top of the screen, but there is no clear keystroke to invoke it, and navigate through it by keyboard arrows. Instead, you must use the mouse to click on it. By doing this, they eliminated a discreet and digital keystroke action by using the keyboard, and turned it into an analog action by forcing you to navigate to the menu by the mouse. On Windows, the keystroke is Alt-F.
• jerome-jh 6y ago
  Android 10 is so full of usability bugs. It always makes me think! I still cannot use my phone in a semi-automatic pattern after months. There are always notifications that cannot be dismissed, smartlock working randomly, etc. Take AndroidAuto: the order of the icons always changes on the front screen. That is so stupid I have no words for it!!! Google Drive: you have to scroll up to the top so that new items appear at the bottom of the list. And so on ...
• ookblah 6y ago
  lol, at the risk of sounding callous there exists a certain set of user that is indeed "stupid" for lack of a better word and it's not worth wasting the last 10-20% of your team's time trying to account and perfect your product for them. anybody who has sat behind someone not familiar with modern web UI conventions and watch them hunt the UI and try to even log in will understand what i'm talking about. give people autonomy in something like a site builder and "trust their competence" and 9 times out of 10 you will end up with some fugly, frankenstein site which might be what they "want" but doesn't serve their goals. it's a lesson in futility and frustration. it's the same people who never bother to learn shortcuts, opting to go to edit menu -> copy every single time. my mother traded in her iphone for an "old" candybar phone because it was too complicated in her mind. in the end, identify your audience and build for familiarity while balancing usability aspects. this fetish for the holy grail of efficiency and simplicity is damaging IMO.
• Grustaf 6y ago
  You might not like the word stupid, so how about "computer illiterate"? And instead of lazy, perhaps "uninterested and distracted"? The end result is exactly the same, and it's indisputable, but I suppose it sounds better.
  • xyst 6y ago
    classic double speak
• nickalaso 6y ago
  Many users ARE stupid and lazy, though certainly not all. But when you create a platform that incentives lazy dumb behavior from both your consumers and your content creators, you end up having a platform with mostly lazy dumb content that mostly only appeals to lazy dumb users, which then creates a feedback loop. Twitter is a prime example of this. The limited tweet length, and the nature of their algorithm incentivizes the "content-creators" on the platform, I.E. the top 1% of users with a significant follower base, to tweet quick, low information, "hot takes" that mostly appeal to dumb partisanship. Also, the way "engagement", I.E. "views" works, incentivizes "zinger" style shit-slinging rather than actual discussion. This ends up driving away people looking for interesting discussions, opinions, or information, reducing the "market" on that platform for a content-creator who wants to create informed or interesting content. This feedback loop cycles over and over, until eventually, a platform that might have once provided interesting content ends up being a place that only provides the lowest brow kind of echo chamber drivel. And this is how Twitter has ended up being a place where the most popular voices are on either side of a binary partisan line, either celebrating the ambush and shooting of two police officers or pushing the idea that anyone with even the slightest past criminal history has no human rights and deserves to be shot by the police.
• GlTChWhISKY 6y ago
  End users are stupid. This isnt something people are just finding out. As technology advances more sects of the tech population will simply stop learning and get comfortable in whatever software or processes they have relied on. Its not about thinking the user is stupid.... They are. But then again im not a mechanic, plumber or tow driver. I domt need to know all their "things" .. But i know how to pus gas in my car, change a tire and drive a car. Im stupid after the very basics.. Just like most end users are. Turning it on .. Checking email.. Looking at facebook .. This is all things people just do.. Its process. Not everyone needs to understand specific errors or mpd. Make the effort .. Earn the understanding.