4 ms·

If you aren't making a consumer product for nursing home patients with sub-90 IQs, then you'd be wasting your time, and the feedback you got from the exercise w

If you aren't making a consumer product for nursing home patients with sub-90 IQs, then you'd be wasting your time, and the feedback you got from the exercise wouldn't be useful. In fact, any decisions you made based on it could be wrong. The point isn't to design for the lowest common denominator, but for the users you will actually have, and usability test participants should be recruited with that in mind. There is some merit to what I assume is your underlying argument, but the way you phrase it isn't helpful.

wharvle 3y ago
A whole lot of us will be mentally impaired sooner or later. Our experience with software when that happens is sad for everyone but bad UI designers. For them, it’s justice.
- brailsafe 3y ago
  A UI designer does a good job if the person who's paying them thinks they did a good job, not whether or not they actually followed best practices, unless that's how the work gets approved. A frontend developer does a good job if their tickets are done and their boss likes them, which may or may not include actual quality work that's accessible or usable. That's the secret I wish I'd known when I started working, could have avoided the extra personal cost of trying produce quality results despite there being no incentive structure for it.
  - alpaca128 3y ago
    Just like morality and law are not the same, the objective quality of a UI designer's work doesn't necessarily have anything in common with their employer's preferences. You're right that only one of those is paid well, but that's not what GP was talking about.
    - brailsafe 3y ago
      > You're right that only one of those is paid well, but that's not what GP was talking about. I didn't say anything about how much someone is paid, just that it is often a job, and whether you have a job depends overwhelmingly on whether the person paying you is convinced that you're doing it well, which may or may not relate to the objective merit of the work. It doesn't matter if you're making $150k or $20k, but it's not wise to prioritize things that nobody paying you didn't ask for. The exceptions are of course things that don't pay at all, in which case your goal is still probably to get the best job you can done under the constraints provided. If those are too tight, things get cut, or you don't sign up for it.
- esafak 3y ago
  So what if we will? That does not mean we will be users of the products we are designing the UI for at that point. Design for actual disabilities that you can reasonably expect your users to have, such as color blindness, not the full spectrum of the human condition. That said, I do think products should be as simple and clear as possible for a given level of essential complexity.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ivan_gammel 3y ago
>The point isn't to design for the lowest common denominator, but for the users you will actually have Keyword: situational disability Even a perfectly fit and educated target audience sometimes suffers from certain conditions or in an environment that significantly reduces their mental or physical capacity. Stress, injury, pregnancy, too many beers, very long nails, terrible weather, a toddler trying to grab your phone, non-native speaker etc etc. You may know the user even personally, but you never know what’s going on in their lives when they use your app. So general advice: ALWAYS follow accessibility guidelines. Even bad copy may drop your usage by a significant percentage, because there are plenty of people with dyslexia.
- doublespanner 3y ago
  Horrible advice for expert tools. If you can make the assumption that the end user is going to learn the tool you can design it for peak effectiveness after a learning curve. If you have to consider retards and hostage situation level panic you can't do that, and create a worse product overall.
  - ivan_gammel 3y ago
    Good luck designing aircraft cockpit with this kind of thinking.
    - doublespanner 3y ago
      You are missing the point, it's obvious that a cockpit needs to account for stress or a crisis. Extending this to CAD software for example is nonsense.
      - omeid2 3y ago
        Why? Is it because you think CAD can't be stressful and under pressure or that people shouldn't do CAD when stressed or under pressure?
      - ivan_gammel 3y ago
alpaca128 3y ago
Countless apps do not even accomodate the users they actually have and very obviously don't test accordingly. The non-lowest common denominator is far lower than you seem to assume. If you think that a fancy UI rework or "please pay our subscription" screen is only confusing to people in nursing homes you are very wrong. They can be nontrivial obstacles to users who work every day, organize conferences etc.
- lazyasciiart 3y ago
  Then you shouldn't need to test on nursing home residents.

wharvle 3y ago

A whole lot of us will be mentally impaired sooner or later. Our experience with software when that happens is sad for everyone but bad UI designers. For them, it’s justice.

brailsafe 3y ago
A UI designer does a good job if the person who's paying them thinks they did a good job, not whether or not they actually followed best practices, unless that's how the work gets approved. A frontend developer does a good job if their tickets are done and their boss likes them, which may or may not include actual quality work that's accessible or usable. That's the secret I wish I'd known when I started working, could have avoided the extra personal cost of trying produce quality results despite there being no incentive structure for it.
- alpaca128 3y ago
  Just like morality and law are not the same, the objective quality of a UI designer's work doesn't necessarily have anything in common with their employer's preferences. You're right that only one of those is paid well, but that's not what GP was talking about.
  - brailsafe 3y ago
    > You're right that only one of those is paid well, but that's not what GP was talking about. I didn't say anything about how much someone is paid, just that it is often a job, and whether you have a job depends overwhelmingly on whether the person paying you is convinced that you're doing it well, which may or may not relate to the objective merit of the work. It doesn't matter if you're making $150k or $20k, but it's not wise to prioritize things that nobody paying you didn't ask for. The exceptions are of course things that don't pay at all, in which case your goal is still probably to get the best job you can done under the constraints provided. If those are too tight, things get cut, or you don't sign up for it.
esafak 3y ago
So what if we will? That does not mean we will be users of the products we are designing the UI for at that point. Design for actual disabilities that you can reasonably expect your users to have, such as color blindness, not the full spectrum of the human condition. That said, I do think products should be as simple and clear as possible for a given level of essential complexity.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ivan_gammel 3y ago

>The point isn't to design for the lowest common denominator, but for the users you will actually have Keyword: situational disability Even a perfectly fit and educated target audience sometimes suffers from certain conditions or in an environment that significantly reduces their mental or physical capacity. Stress, injury, pregnancy, too many beers, very long nails, terrible weather, a toddler trying to grab your phone, non-native speaker etc etc. You may know the user even personally, but you never know what’s going on in their lives when they use your app. So general advice: ALWAYS follow accessibility guidelines. Even bad copy may drop your usage by a significant percentage, because there are plenty of people with dyslexia.

doublespanner 3y ago
Horrible advice for expert tools. If you can make the assumption that the end user is going to learn the tool you can design it for peak effectiveness after a learning curve. If you have to consider retards and hostage situation level panic you can't do that, and create a worse product overall.
- ivan_gammel 3y ago
  Good luck designing aircraft cockpit with this kind of thinking.
  - doublespanner 3y ago
    You are missing the point, it's obvious that a cockpit needs to account for stress or a crisis. Extending this to CAD software for example is nonsense.
    - omeid2 3y ago
      Why? Is it because you think CAD can't be stressful and under pressure or that people shouldn't do CAD when stressed or under pressure?
    - ivan_gammel 3y ago

alpaca128 3y ago

Countless apps do not even accomodate the users they actually have and very obviously don't test accordingly. The non-lowest common denominator is far lower than you seem to assume. If you think that a fancy UI rework or "please pay our subscription" screen is only confusing to people in nursing homes you are very wrong. They can be nontrivial obstacles to users who work every day, organize conferences etc.

lazyasciiart 3y ago
Then you shouldn't need to test on nursing home residents.