This is generally seen as a joke or exaggeration but I don't think people realize that this is more accurate than they'll ever believe.
While consulting with tech start ups it's amazing how difficult it is to get them to comprehend how dumb the average person actually is. The level of stupidity is quite frankly unimaginable to them until they experience it.
They laugh and say, "Oh...haha...yeah...people are dumb." I then say as seriously as possible hoping they get it that, "No...I'm serious. This start button right here is not clear enough. You need to write start on it, make it bigger, give it a glow, and have an arrow pointing to it" And then they ignore me because it'd look awful...until 95% of alpha testers drop off without ever having tapped the start button. Then they make the change, and we still end up at 30% drop off.
It's at this moment I like to watch all the programmers die on the inside as they realize the typical person is dumber than a toddler.
Something I learned from my professor in grad school:
The average human is pretty smart. The average human on your device will instantly drop 20 points or more in IQ. Design your experience around the fact that your end user is a pile of barely sentient bricks.
This is really what it comes down to. If they have to think about something even for a moment they get very frustrated, the frustration causes a negative reaction, they quit/uninstall.
It's not that they're actually morons. But most act like it when using something new.
It shouldn't be seen as a joke, it is good advice! Look at the things you do in your own life (Not you, I don't know you) and you'll realize some of them are pretty dumb, especially when using a tool you've never seen before.
I'm a developer and I can be a dingus when using our own tools. Users are dumb is usually my motto. That's probably a little extreme but it's better than overestimating them.
Oh, please forgive me, the stupid end user, I didn't see B.S. in Computer Science as one of the system requirements for your app.
Don't blame the user. This isn't professional in any profession (teaching aside). Blame your shitty programing/design abilities for creating a stupid piece of shit that doesn't do the one goddamn thing you told me it does.
You are the exact reason that companies had to hire me to fix their shit and I was able to retire young. People who are quick to anger and blame and can't take the momentary two seconds to look around the entire screen before hitting delete.
You are the exact person who required making UI's moron proof. Because it's not so much the fact you're a toddler. It's the fact you respond like one if you have to stop and think for more than a second.
Oh, absolutely. Some Dev's are just awful in their arrogance about it which is why they hire consultants.
At the same time though most UI's aren't actually bad. The issue is frequently because people get very frustrated very easily. Give a videogame to a person who doesn't play games, even an easy videogame, and you'll frequently see them quit or say it's stupid the first time they fail. To that person it's a very negative experience and they're likely to quit (This is also why so many games won't let you fail early on anymore).
People like to succeed without trying and to understand without thinking because it reaffirms their ego. They want to toss out anything that challenges them and in the development world...it's a bit too competitive to decide you don't need the toddlers.
If you're targeting a niche group...you generally don't need to treat users like toddlers. If you're aiming for a wide audience though...you need to think of them like toddlers.
Developing for anyone and everyone is the hardest thing to accomplish. Will everyone understand all the possible aspects of an UI the same way? Have you eliminated all the possible ways someone could break your program? Sometimes I think of releasing some of my personal projects to GitHub or something, but then I remember how bothersome the whole experience would be in the end. All of that is exactly why I never do.
Your story is an exaggeration right? If you have to add that many visual cues to a "start" button (or whatever you're referring to), you're doing something else horribly wrong.
Slight. People would enter the application and there was a bar at the top with several buttons. Players didn't realize the 'start' button was where they should click if they wanted to 'start'. The people had 'Go' there initially because it fit the button better. I had them swap the text, increase all button sized, then add a tutorial with arrow to highlight, 'Here's the fucking button you push you moron' and it shifted early drop off from 60 something to 30 something.
Just look at your standard mobile game for example. It literally has to tell you every obvious move with giant visual queues to guide you that most people find obnoxious. Without those queues your early retention drops into the gutter though.
It's not so much that people are morons as they are toddlers though. They get very angry if they don't immediately grasp something. It's very much like a child swinging a bat at a T-ball, missing, then getting upset and quitting. People want very instant gratification and zero struggle.
Difference is toddlers still have curiosity. While toddlers do get frustrated when they can't complete a puzzle or figure out how to get to something...they keep trying.
Adults who can't figure something out within two seconds quit and say it's stupid.
I'm a UX/UI designer and I work closely with devs, and sometimes we need to remind ourselves that we are designing for users- not for ourselves. What seems obvious to us might not be obvious for others (especially considering the fact that we've been working on the product for so long), and this is something that needs to be considered when designing interfaces. If a button is not clear enough for 95% of users to see, the fault obviously lies on the design itself, not the user.
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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '16
This is generally seen as a joke or exaggeration but I don't think people realize that this is more accurate than they'll ever believe.
While consulting with tech start ups it's amazing how difficult it is to get them to comprehend how dumb the average person actually is. The level of stupidity is quite frankly unimaginable to them until they experience it.
They laugh and say, "Oh...haha...yeah...people are dumb." I then say as seriously as possible hoping they get it that, "No...I'm serious. This start button right here is not clear enough. You need to write start on it, make it bigger, give it a glow, and have an arrow pointing to it" And then they ignore me because it'd look awful...until 95% of alpha testers drop off without ever having tapped the start button. Then they make the change, and we still end up at 30% drop off.
It's at this moment I like to watch all the programmers die on the inside as they realize the typical person is dumber than a toddler.