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Oh boy, this rings close to home. I recently got my dad an Android One device. He lives in semi-urban India and has never had a smartphone before. I installed

Oh boy, this rings close to home. I recently got my dad an Android One device. He lives in semi-urban India and has never had a smartphone before. I installed WhatsApp and Skype and watched him interact and find his way through. Most of the functions/idioms we take for granted were totally unintuitive to him. Some of the examples: * After opening a chat, how to type when there's no keyboard visible? There is no way to know that touching the text area brings up the keyboard. * After typing and pressing enter, how to send the message? The traingular 'airplane' icon didn't make sense to him. * How to access settings and hamburger menus? I wish there comes a time where UX designers stop quarreling over flat vs skeuomorphic and focus on real usability.

vacri 12y ago
This being said, interfaces should be designed for 'usual users', not 'complete neophytes' (and of course, not 'tech wizards' either). A computer is a complex item; designing an interface so that it can be used with no training and no cultural precursor is designing for an outlier. The interface should be appropriate and accessible, but it shouldn't make life harder for the normal user in order to onboard neophytes. I think it's reasonable to expect users to get some minor training - after all, what might signify 'next' to a semi-urban Indian might be utterly meaningless to an an elderly recluse in Poland or a scatterbrain in Argentina. Expecting to come up with a universal UI that onboards neophytes with zero training is probably a bit much.