<story><title>Disrespectful Design – Users aren’t stupid or lazy</title><url>https://somehowmanage.com/2020/09/13/disrespectful-design-users-arent-stupid-or-lazy/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sime2009</author><text>A better model for thinking of users is to realise that they are not stupid, just busy and distracted. From an app point of view you can count yourself lucky if you get even 10% of their attention at any given time.&lt;p&gt;Users aren&amp;#x27;t thinking about your app when they use it.&lt;p&gt;That person in MSWord isn&amp;#x27;t thinking about the ribbon bar. They are thinking about how to address that new prospective customer.&lt;p&gt;That person in Excel isn&amp;#x27;t thinking about cells either. They are thinking about whether Robin in R&amp;amp;D is going to get the figures for Q2 to them in time.&lt;p&gt;Users have tasks to concentrate on. They don&amp;#x27;t have the attention left over to deal with your app&amp;#x27;s crappy UI.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dkarl</author><text>The side effect of being busy and distracted is that they&amp;#x27;re extremely thrifty with their attention, and sometimes their split-second subconscious decision not to look closely at something gets locked in and not reevaluated.  About 70% of the IT support I do for my family goes like this:&lt;p&gt;Voice from the next room:  &amp;quot;Can you help me, dkarl?  The computer won&amp;#x27;t save my document.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Me, comfy in my chair:  &amp;quot;What does it say?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;It&amp;#x27;s doing something weird.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Weird how?  What does it say?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I don&amp;#x27;t know, I was just saving like I always do, and now there&amp;#x27;s this window and it wants me to do something.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;What is it asking you to do?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;It wants me to click something?  I don&amp;#x27;t know, maybe it wants a password or it&amp;#x27;s not going to do it because of iCloud or something?  It&amp;#x27;s been weird lately.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Okay.  What are the words in the window where it wants you to click something?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;It says... oh, it says there&amp;#x27;s another file with this name already.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Okay, do you want me to come over there and help you find the other file and see what&amp;#x27;s in it?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;No, I can do it.  Thank you!&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I think one of the reasons I find computers relatively easy is that I compulsively read whatever you put in front of me.  I always read cereal boxes when I was a kid, even the non-kid cereal boxes that were all about colon health and fiber.  But even I get this blindness sometimes, especially when I&amp;#x27;m writing code and running builds and tests and trying to work quickly and efficiently.  I&amp;#x27;ll get hung up on something for ten minutes where the answer is literally spelled out for me in front of my face.</text></comment>
<story><title>Disrespectful Design – Users aren’t stupid or lazy</title><url>https://somehowmanage.com/2020/09/13/disrespectful-design-users-arent-stupid-or-lazy/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sime2009</author><text>A better model for thinking of users is to realise that they are not stupid, just busy and distracted. From an app point of view you can count yourself lucky if you get even 10% of their attention at any given time.&lt;p&gt;Users aren&amp;#x27;t thinking about your app when they use it.&lt;p&gt;That person in MSWord isn&amp;#x27;t thinking about the ribbon bar. They are thinking about how to address that new prospective customer.&lt;p&gt;That person in Excel isn&amp;#x27;t thinking about cells either. They are thinking about whether Robin in R&amp;amp;D is going to get the figures for Q2 to them in time.&lt;p&gt;Users have tasks to concentrate on. They don&amp;#x27;t have the attention left over to deal with your app&amp;#x27;s crappy UI.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jwr</author><text>&amp;gt; A better model for thinking of users is to realise that they are not stupid, just busy and distracted.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d put it differently. Realize that your app is not the center of the world. Your users have things to do, and using your app is a small fraction of their life. Even though it might be your baby and you might be spending all of your waking ours thinking about your app, user perspective is different.</text></comment>