If You Think Your Users Are Stupid, You're Probably Doing it Wrong

I was recently in an office where a programmer and a designer were complaining about their users being too stupid.

The users weren't using the program they were tasked with developing "properly". If you develop an application that the users cannot figure out, you have failed to do your job, and are asking the users to do it for you.

As an application developer, it is your job to be invisible, and to make the software invisible. The user, novice or expert, should be able to get in to your system, figure out how it works immediately, do what they need to, and leave easily.

One of the most valuable things I've found out as a developer is that users rarely think in the same models as you. As programmers, we're taught to divide the world in to neat little problems and objects that flow through pipes and get transformed.

The user doesn't understand that the box that helps them compose email is a text pane wrapped in a scroll pane that has buttons that apply styles to the data inside that passes it to a renderer, and has a side process that is activated whenever a whitespace token is pressed that does a spelling check on the document. They probably don't imagine that the place to enter names that looks them up in their contacts database is a separate piece of software altogether. To the user, the object they see is a form.

This leads me to a few, simple rules for usability design that I think everyone should benefit from:

Anticipate the User's Needs

If you are writing an email app, auto-suggest contacts to use as recipients, offer printer-friendly versions of everything (preferably that auto-format for printers).

Consistency

Just because you're designing a website for My Little Pony watchers doesn't mean purple links is a good idea (forgive me if I've gotten this entirely wrong), blue links are standard, and they are what users look for.

• Buttons are not links, and links are not buttons (links navigate and buttons change the current page)
• If two things look the same, they should do the same thing.
• If something is dangerous

Navigation

Or, "where the hell am I?" generally you don't need folders in folders in folders; if you do, you're doing something horribly wrong. Even desktop applications benefit from clear location awareness.

If you have a confusing area in your software, use contextual popups (when the user is editing a form) or help can help ferry the user through potentially confusing areas.

Speed

This one is probably the most useful. Find out what 90% of your users are doing (it is probably either not what you intended, or they are doing what you wanted in a long and laborious way), so try doing the following:

• Remove all items in a form that aren't required.
• Allow sign-in from existing accounts, like Google/Twitter/Facebook if applicable.
• Show the user the status of their most used items right away, using colors if possible.
• Use consistent icons.
• Use consistent navigation.
• When the users are working around somthing you've made, fix your software to facilitate their way (ideally you'd make whatever way you had in mind the easiest so it would be quickly discovered and used)