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"treating your users as incompetent" Actually, this is good practice. We are all busy and distracted. Dumbing down an experience to it's essential aspects is

by jariel 6y ago

"treating your users as incompetent" Actually, this is good practice. We are all busy and distracted. Dumbing down an experience to it's essential aspects is a great way to make something easier to use. If a 'fool could use it while trying to juggle' then that's good. Making it dumb means speaking to intuition, not thought. I should add, there are some good comments here about 'command line' etc. - I suggest that that makes sense but in an entirely different realm of usability. Designing for something that's going to be used by competent people all day for their jobs, is different than designing for the proles standing in line at the bank, looking for 3 minutes of respite from whatever, or even trying to squeeze in that little update.

majewsky 6y ago
I somewhat agree. A UI that works well for inexperienced users is better than one that isn't. But the real measure of a good UI is if it works well for inexperienced users and actively allows for them to gain experience while using the software. A good example is how, in classic application menus, each entry would have its keyboard shortcut printed next to it. A fresh user can navigate the menu to find an action, and the same option is open to anyone how forgot about how to invoke the action, but whenever they land on the action, they can see the keyboard shortcut and eventually they'll remember it and learn to invoke the action faster without having to make an active effort. This is good UX. Then designers or product owners or someone decided that the shortcuts made their menus look cluttered (or maybe they really took that "treating your users as incompetent" mantra to heart and thought the shortcuts looked too technical or intimidating), thus condeming inexperienced users to stay inexperienced forever. This is bad UX.
- jariel 6y ago
  Those are good points - often we're in different headspaces as well on the matter. Physical product design, mobile app, command line, common entry (like the software the waiter uses), pro software (i.e. Photoshop) are all very different aspects of usability representing colliding viewpoints.

by jariel 6y ago

majewsky 6y ago

I somewhat agree. A UI that works well for inexperienced users is better than one that isn't. But the real measure of a good UI is if it works well for inexperienced users and actively allows for them to gain experience while using the software. A good example is how, in classic application menus, each entry would have its keyboard shortcut printed next to it. A fresh user can navigate the menu to find an action, and the same option is open to anyone how forgot about how to invoke the action, but whenever they land on the action, they can see the keyboard shortcut and eventually they'll remember it and learn to invoke the action faster without having to make an active effort. This is good UX. Then designers or product owners or someone decided that the shortcuts made their menus look cluttered (or maybe they really took that "treating your users as incompetent" mantra to heart and thought the shortcuts looked too technical or intimidating), thus condeming inexperienced users to stay inexperienced forever. This is bad UX.

jariel 6y ago
Those are good points - often we're in different headspaces as well on the matter. Physical product design, mobile app, command line, common entry (like the software the waiter uses), pro software (i.e. Photoshop) are all very different aspects of usability representing colliding viewpoints.