Protecting Users From Themselv…

There is a law in the computer world that states that the simpler that computers are to use, the less technical the general population of the people using them will be. Therefore, computers will tend to get simpler over time. There is another law in user interfaces. That law states that if an interface is too complex for your mother to use, then it is too complex for general computer users, because the majority of computer users will be able to navigate an interface about as well as your mother can. Naturally, it is the designer's responsibility to consider this when designing an interface. Designing with your mother in mind is called protecting users from themselves.
Protecting users from themselves is harder than it would appear, because users, just like your mother, are not stupid, they're just forgettful. Users will not have a good experience when using your software if they feel that the software thinks it is smarter than they are. The trick here is to provide a good experience to the first time user, while making the person who uses the program every day feel that the program adds to his day. The regular user does not want to see the tip of the day about some option buried in some menu. He wants the software to be intuitive and to bring back the feeling of when he first used the software and it was dead simple to use. The first time user wants the software to be dead simple to use.
Simplicity is not the enemy of power. A designer simply has to layer the interface, presenting the simple interface first. This is not an excuse to have a two different interfaces, however. The trick is to display the simple interface, then hide the power user functions. A good example of this is the Mac OS X dock. The beginning user will simply click on applications in the dock to launch them. The more advanced user will drag the icons around and right click for menus. The expert user will shift-drag the divider to move the edge of the screen the dock is on. (if you thought that every Mac OS X user knew to drag the icons in the dock, think again: my mother didn't.) The dock serves its base purpose, launching applications. People that want to explore further can. But the average "mom" user can use it to serve it's purpose, and is not exposed to anything out of the ordinary. That's the developer thinking ahead, which As we move on into the computer age, will become even more important.

Posted with LifeCast