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"Overwhelming manual" is not objective thing. Some domains need to have overwhelming documentation because they are so complex. Even with careful design of such

"Overwhelming manual" is not objective thing. Some domains need to have overwhelming documentation because they are so complex. Even with careful design of such docs (i.e. progressive disclosure, cross linking etc.) it still can be overwhelming and it depends on your background. It also ignores the context - I create gov services, and people are mandated to use them by the law, not because they want to. No amount of design will solve that. They come to spend as low amount of time as possible in order not to have legal repercussions.

onion2k 5y ago
I create gov services, and people are mandated to use them by the law, not because they want to. No amount of design will solve that. The article that this thread is about is written by someone on the UK government digital service team. The UK government puts significant effort into doing exactly what you say isn't possible. The GDS team solve those exact problems by designing services that users can easily use without FAQs (or even looking at the documentation in most cases). And, as a British person in the UK who uses the government's websites a bit, I have to say they do a really good job of it. If you believe designing government services means you can't design them well and make them easy to use then I suggest you invest time reading the GDS blog. You will learn a lot.
- majkinetor 5y ago
  The GDS team works on portal to other services. I design services which are way more complex. Think of stuff like budget execution or online banking. Not the same problem. > And, as a British person in the UK who uses the government's websites a bit, I have to say they do a really good job of it. I agree. When I was working on similar website for our government, I used UK.gov as a reference. > If you believe designing government services means you can't design them well and make them easy to use then I suggest you invest time reading the GDS blog. You will learn a lot. I didn't say that. My services are very easy to use, but still have massive documentation. And no, I learned from GDS 10 years ago. They can probably learn from me now. I have way more experience and countless public services with total of around 100M users on all of them.
  - avianlyric 5y ago
    > The GDS team works on portal to other services. No GDS does both. The run the main portal, but they also consult and build out the actual services as well. The entire reasons for GDSs success is because they were given the authority to go into and department, and simply replace what they had. GDS designed systems have slowly replaced every other government over the past 10 years. Today you have to be doing something really unusual to encounter a service that hasn’t been overhauled by GDS. Everything from passport renewals to tax reports have all been rebuilt by GDS, and all are clear and easy to use. If you’re not a U.K. citizen using gov.uk services, then I have no idea how you can comment on what GDS have and have not built. But it’s substantially more than a portal, the portal is barely scratching the surface of what they’ve achieved.
    - majkinetor 5y ago
      > If you’re not a U.K. citizen using gov.uk services, then I have no idea how you can comment on what GDS have and have not built. I am following them and listening them on IT conferences. I didn't know they have such jurisdiction. But obviously, its still not the same thing, far away from it. I am talking about services that take multi years to make and involve 100ths engineers from big companies. Each of them. GDS didn't create a government bank or auction platform or eInvocing system. They can't. Its a "bit more involved" then organizing passports, identification cards, documents etc.
  - onion2k 5y ago
    I design services which are way more complex. I would argue that developers giving up on simplicity and accepting complexity is almost the reason why teams like the GDS exist. That way of thinking is how things spiral into being so complex everyone hates using the service. It needs someone to reframe the problem as one of "How do we make this simpler?" in order to improve. Until you think about things that way you can't make them better.
    - majkinetor 5y ago
      You can argue all you want. Giving up on simplicity and accepting complexity seems like a natural thing to do for landing on Moon, no ? No amount of "lets make it simple and just jump really high" will do that. Lets live in real world, you can't dummy out everything. The term is wicked problem - it depends on a lot of stakeholders, many of which already in the comfort zone, and you can't change shit without having a major storm.

onion2k 5y ago

I create gov services, and people are mandated to use them by the law, not because they want to. No amount of design will solve that. The article that this thread is about is written by someone on the UK government digital service team. The UK government puts significant effort into doing exactly what you say isn't possible. The GDS team solve those exact problems by designing services that users can easily use without FAQs (or even looking at the documentation in most cases). And, as a British person in the UK who uses the government's websites a bit, I have to say they do a really good job of it. If you believe designing government services means you can't design them well and make them easy to use then I suggest you invest time reading the GDS blog. You will learn a lot.

majkinetor 5y ago
The GDS team works on portal to other services. I design services which are way more complex. Think of stuff like budget execution or online banking. Not the same problem. > And, as a British person in the UK who uses the government's websites a bit, I have to say they do a really good job of it. I agree. When I was working on similar website for our government, I used UK.gov as a reference. > If you believe designing government services means you can't design them well and make them easy to use then I suggest you invest time reading the GDS blog. You will learn a lot. I didn't say that. My services are very easy to use, but still have massive documentation. And no, I learned from GDS 10 years ago. They can probably learn from me now. I have way more experience and countless public services with total of around 100M users on all of them.
- avianlyric 5y ago
  > The GDS team works on portal to other services. No GDS does both. The run the main portal, but they also consult and build out the actual services as well. The entire reasons for GDSs success is because they were given the authority to go into and department, and simply replace what they had. GDS designed systems have slowly replaced every other government over the past 10 years. Today you have to be doing something really unusual to encounter a service that hasn’t been overhauled by GDS. Everything from passport renewals to tax reports have all been rebuilt by GDS, and all are clear and easy to use. If you’re not a U.K. citizen using gov.uk services, then I have no idea how you can comment on what GDS have and have not built. But it’s substantially more than a portal, the portal is barely scratching the surface of what they’ve achieved.
  - majkinetor 5y ago
    > If you’re not a U.K. citizen using gov.uk services, then I have no idea how you can comment on what GDS have and have not built. I am following them and listening them on IT conferences. I didn't know they have such jurisdiction. But obviously, its still not the same thing, far away from it. I am talking about services that take multi years to make and involve 100ths engineers from big companies. Each of them. GDS didn't create a government bank or auction platform or eInvocing system. They can't. Its a "bit more involved" then organizing passports, identification cards, documents etc.
- onion2k 5y ago
  I design services which are way more complex. I would argue that developers giving up on simplicity and accepting complexity is almost the reason why teams like the GDS exist. That way of thinking is how things spiral into being so complex everyone hates using the service. It needs someone to reframe the problem as one of "How do we make this simpler?" in order to improve. Until you think about things that way you can't make them better.
  - majkinetor 5y ago
    You can argue all you want. Giving up on simplicity and accepting complexity seems like a natural thing to do for landing on Moon, no ? No amount of "lets make it simple and just jump really high" will do that. Lets live in real world, you can't dummy out everything. The term is wicked problem - it depends on a lot of stakeholders, many of which already in the comfort zone, and you can't change shit without having a major storm.