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>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 an

>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
      I like your confidence, but it also manifests lack of experience and understanding of what engineering is. Expert tools have much lower tolerance for user mistakes because there are big money at stake (or sometimes lives of other people). A typo in Instagram post is not the same as a wrong number in CAD. I have personally seen a construction project where incorrect input in CAD resulted in several dozen foundation piles for a 16-story building installed outside the site boundary. Just because an architect responsible for aligning the building on site made a mistake working in a hurry, confusing two fields in the UI. Of course, there was a chain of failures, each next step costing more than previous one, but it could have been prevented if the software cared about the user and did not assume he is a superman. It is so easy to squeeze as much functionality as possible on a screen trying to optimize productivity, but then quality of labels is sacrificed, click zones become too small and feedback is reduced to a barely visible message in status bar. It takes one sleepless night or a family argument for the user to get distracted and make a wrong but very expensive mistake.
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
  You know very well that “retards” isn’t an acceptable word. It’s not even used in scientific literature anymore in the way that you’re using it.
  - doublespanner 3y ago
    I do not care about your opinion of acceptable language. Attempting to insert your off topic opinion is a character flaw. Keep it to yourself.
  - oh_sigh 3y ago
    Shouldn't it be up for grabs then? According to the logic of "you don't call retarded people retarded. You call your friends retarded when they're acting retarded."
- lastdong 3y ago
  I think the point is that you can design for peak effectiveness while considering usability, and that makes the tool more effective. There’s a lot more scrutiny on edge cases when designing expert tools. On “Expert Tools” I’d argue it’s imperative to consider high stress levels interactions, because the outcome outweighs the expert using it.
Wowfunhappy 3y ago
Pick your favorite programming language. Do you think it should be tested on people in a nursing home? I'd argue that's the wrong audience. (A programming language isn't a graphical user interface, but it is a user interface!)
- ivan_gammel 3y ago
  Programming language is not a user interface, it is a way to describe commands. The UI in this case would be the way to enter the program, e.g. punch cards, text editor or IDE, or AI copilot. People who can write code are very broad audience and of course all accessibility requirements must apply.
  - _gabe_ 3y ago
    A programming language is absolutely a user interface. The error messages and diagnostics emitted by the language are the feedback mechanisms. The syntax and semantics are the design of the interface. The documentation is the user manual. Text editors, IDEs, punch cards and AI copilot are all separate UIs on top of whatever programming language you happen to be using. After all, TUIs are a thing and nobody debates that they are also user interfaces. Just because a programming language is all text doesn’t mean that usability metrics don’t exist for it.
    - ivan_gammel 3y ago
      >The error messages and diagnostics emitted by the language are the feedback mechanisms. The error messages and diagnostics are emitted by the tools like compiler, linker or interpreter and are part of their interface. Language standard may codify some error messages, but language itself cannot present them to you because language is not a program. >Just because a programming language is all text doesn’t mean that usability metrics don’t exist for it. Just because some usability metrics can be applied to a programming language, it does not make it UI. Interface implies interaction. You do not interact with language - it cannot receive UI events and react to them, you interact with the tools that understand it.

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
    I like your confidence, but it also manifests lack of experience and understanding of what engineering is. Expert tools have much lower tolerance for user mistakes because there are big money at stake (or sometimes lives of other people). A typo in Instagram post is not the same as a wrong number in CAD. I have personally seen a construction project where incorrect input in CAD resulted in several dozen foundation piles for a 16-story building installed outside the site boundary. Just because an architect responsible for aligning the building on site made a mistake working in a hurry, confusing two fields in the UI. Of course, there was a chain of failures, each next step costing more than previous one, but it could have been prevented if the software cared about the user and did not assume he is a superman. It is so easy to squeeze as much functionality as possible on a screen trying to optimize productivity, but then quality of labels is sacrificed, click zones become too small and feedback is reduced to a barely visible message in status bar. It takes one sleepless night or a family argument for the user to get distracted and make a wrong but very expensive mistake.
cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
You know very well that “retards” isn’t an acceptable word. It’s not even used in scientific literature anymore in the way that you’re using it.
- doublespanner 3y ago
  I do not care about your opinion of acceptable language. Attempting to insert your off topic opinion is a character flaw. Keep it to yourself.
- oh_sigh 3y ago
  Shouldn't it be up for grabs then? According to the logic of "you don't call retarded people retarded. You call your friends retarded when they're acting retarded."
lastdong 3y ago
I think the point is that you can design for peak effectiveness while considering usability, and that makes the tool more effective. There’s a lot more scrutiny on edge cases when designing expert tools. On “Expert Tools” I’d argue it’s imperative to consider high stress levels interactions, because the outcome outweighs the expert using it.

Wowfunhappy 3y ago

Pick your favorite programming language. Do you think it should be tested on people in a nursing home? I'd argue that's the wrong audience. (A programming language isn't a graphical user interface, but it is a user interface!)

ivan_gammel 3y ago
Programming language is not a user interface, it is a way to describe commands. The UI in this case would be the way to enter the program, e.g. punch cards, text editor or IDE, or AI copilot. People who can write code are very broad audience and of course all accessibility requirements must apply.
- _gabe_ 3y ago
  A programming language is absolutely a user interface. The error messages and diagnostics emitted by the language are the feedback mechanisms. The syntax and semantics are the design of the interface. The documentation is the user manual. Text editors, IDEs, punch cards and AI copilot are all separate UIs on top of whatever programming language you happen to be using. After all, TUIs are a thing and nobody debates that they are also user interfaces. Just because a programming language is all text doesn’t mean that usability metrics don’t exist for it.
  - ivan_gammel 3y ago
    >The error messages and diagnostics emitted by the language are the feedback mechanisms. The error messages and diagnostics are emitted by the tools like compiler, linker or interpreter and are part of their interface. Language standard may codify some error messages, but language itself cannot present them to you because language is not a program. >Just because a programming language is all text doesn’t mean that usability metrics don’t exist for it. Just because some usability metrics can be applied to a programming language, it does not make it UI. Interface implies interaction. You do not interact with language - it cannot receive UI events and react to them, you interact with the tools that understand it.