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The point was less to draw an analogy and more to reflect on how I've seen users behave when exploring software for the first time. When testing new concepts,

The point was less to draw an analogy and more to reflect on how I've seen users behave when exploring software for the first time. When testing new concepts, observing users try things out reveals a spectrum of expectations about where things should be, and how to achieve a task. So we try to find the combination of things that surprises people the least, as much of the time as possible. And when a new user doesn't find the chosen approach perfectly intuitive, this is usually a temporary problem, because learning where something is takes care of this with a few repetitions. Product tours help. An equivalent chat interface might be able to adapt on the fly to a wide range of user types, but this still doesn't imply anything about the core usability of the product and whether or not someone prefers to interact with a chatbot. Put another way, some use cases just aren't a good fit for a chatbot, even a very very good one. I do agree that though niche, there are a lot of interesting opportunities with a sufficiently fluent conversational AI.

dmix 4y ago
I agree, I've done the whole UX/product dev long enough. But I also find most software people significantly discredit the ability of the average user. The default is lazy and surprisingly dumb, but if you also dig into why they say dumb stuff it's because they default to zero effort. In reality they are actually highly capable of learning, they just don't bother trying. Or have little incentive or time/afforded mental capacity to do so. The classic example is how everyone whines about redesigns and changes (even on HN). But if you just ignore them within a year the new UI is getting 2x the pageviews/time on site. That sort of thing. Just because they say dumb stuff and sound lazy doesn't mean they are not capable to adapt. I see the same thing with specialized people using [future chatgpt interface]. Even the sales/management/niche business users we despise but have to deal with are IRL highly specialized, educated people. They can learn when their jobs depends on it. Even if they aren't capable enough to be software devs. Their jobs/education/life experience has not depended on communicating well with software people. But they can learn and adapt to the tricks/quirks/specialization of communicating prompts to AI if needed.

dmix 4y ago

I agree, I've done the whole UX/product dev long enough. But I also find most software people significantly discredit the ability of the average user. The default is lazy and surprisingly dumb, but if you also dig into why they say dumb stuff it's because they default to zero effort. In reality they are actually highly capable of learning, they just don't bother trying. Or have little incentive or time/afforded mental capacity to do so. The classic example is how everyone whines about redesigns and changes (even on HN). But if you just ignore them within a year the new UI is getting 2x the pageviews/time on site. That sort of thing. Just because they say dumb stuff and sound lazy doesn't mean they are not capable to adapt. I see the same thing with specialized people using [future chatgpt interface]. Even the sales/management/niche business users we despise but have to deal with are IRL highly specialized, educated people. They can learn when their jobs depends on it. Even if they aren't capable enough to be software devs. Their jobs/education/life experience has not depended on communicating well with software people. But they can learn and adapt to the tricks/quirks/specialization of communicating prompts to AI if needed.