My most recent job the head of the company had a great comment. One of the first things he told me "Our end users are not smart, no matter what anyone tells you. They can barely use a computer. Remember that."
He wasn't wrong ;)
He wasn't wrong ;)
Have a suggestion on how something could be done better? Your way is too complicated and our users are dumb as posts. So we can’t do it. It’s not worth even thinking about.
Of course if THEY want to do the complicated hard to understand thing, it will be fine.
Just one of MANY examples.
Why do the job if you have actual contempt for your users?
To... To get paid, isn't that obvious? Sometimes you have to do what you have to do.
It's not contempt, it's understanding who is at the end of the keyboard.
In this case our customers are fairly capable, but the software is really for their end customers who are in a niche industry that is AMAZINGLY behind the times in terms of technology, and the people they hire who actually end up doing a lot of interacting with the software are honestly barely high school grads and are surprisingly incapable / startled by anything out of a very specific routine.
Truth is, most people are smart enough. If this is a product for internal use, then they might be also extremely motivated, as it happens when handling some piece of software becomes a key element of keeping a job.
Taking the approach of "our users are dumb" makes sense only when you're not thinking about providing value for those users, and instead you're worrying your product could make the wrong first impression (and probably not on users, but the managers), and thus not get bought. It's a valid priority for business, but it would serve everyone better if people were up-front about it.
I agree, if we assume they're going to try. It's not a perfect world and IMO most people really aren't trying / putting in the effort on the things we think they should. It's not fair, but if they're not going to try, they're still the person behind the keyboard.
That's a managerial problem not a technical one, so any technical solution like dumbing down the user interface will almost certainly fail.
I imagine the hypothetical lazy user thinking ‘I cannot figure out a way to convince my boss that I do not understand this UI...’
Nah, that's an indicator the software is most likely not very useful. Like in code, in user interfaces too there's both essential and accidental complexity. Plenty of the latter to improve on, but reducing essential complexity === reducing features === reducing utility of the software.
> I imagine the hypothetical lazy user thinking ‘I cannot figure out a way to convince my boss that I do not understand this UI...’
I imagine said lazy user asking the boss to buy a training course. If that software is so important for the company, a training course is both useful and cheaper than hiring someone who maybe can learn the software themselves in place of said lazy user. Training courses tend to provide ample opportunity to slack off too, so that's a double win for the lazy user :).
(That said, from personal observations of my wife's and mine, people seem to be split on that somewhat halfway - one half will jump at the opportunity to learn something new and progress at their workplace or in their career, the other half will roll their eyes and ask "why should I bother"? That latter group responds to "because it's that or your job" argument, though.