> It was also amazing to me how someone with limited computer knowledge can use a software tool so well. He still double-clicks links on web pages, but he can create a full building plan with ease in CorelDRAW, so they must've been doing something right!
I was interested in what exactly made AutoCAD (in my dad's case) so easy to use, because if you've ever worked with it, man, it's anything but. I got to use it during my undergrad classes and the only thing I liked about it was AutoLISP :-). It's polished in every way but it's clearly a program that first hit the market in the 1980s.
Turns out my father didn't think it was easy to use at all, either, he thought it was awful. But he really needed it, so he really put in the effort to learn it. It wasn't some super-human feat, it took him about a week of practice on increasingly complicated drawings. He was already great at technical drawing so he just had to figure out how to do it with that weird program.
It's been a useful lesson ever since: given the right motivation, people will put up with any UI. Rationalizing the design choices that went into it is not always the best avenue.