coffee, black   no sugar


20071122 Thursday November 22, 2007
ignore the ignorants

I have never seen anything good coming out of ui design where the designers think they are smarter than their users or that users are unable or simply not interested to learn a thing or two.

Someone smart, working in HR, said to me lately: People are by default motivated. Motivation is not the problem. Demotivating people is the problem.

I think this can be applied to ui design. If someone handles a user interface, he always starts motivated. He wants to do something, may that be reading the news or making a video or just listening to music. The demotivating starts then when the app asks for annoying confirmations, behaves incoherently and inconsistently and offers things the user just does not want to know. It then get's in the way and people wish it to get out of their faces again.

Good user interfaces are pleasing, and not entertaining. They are consistent and precise, and not surprising. They reward intelligence and do not treat everyone as a first time user.

get advice

I just found the BGB (german civil law book) on my Amazon recommendation list and was wondering if Amazon knows something about me that I don't...

I suppose if Amazon and Google merge, it would start making sense to inform yourself every morning at Amazon what the day will bring.

wide or deep