Designing For Your Mother

This is a wonderful article.

The only quibble I have -- and I want to emphasize that its a quibble, and in no way detracts from the overall thrust of the message -- is the point about filling out forms. Equivocating "some users don't mind clicking" with "you should feel okay with forcing some users to click more" is dangerous, because there are better ways to give visual feedback than forcing them to hit a next button (especially when the user hitting that next button is using a comparably slow internet connection.)

For example, one thing my dad does with all registration forms (offline or online) is review everything he's typed in before hitting the final submit button. I've watched him do this with countless sites and break the registration in the process because he hits back on Page 3 and resubmits on Page 2 and suddenly nothing's working and you just lost a customer over the age of 45.

There are better ways to "give your users visual feedback that they are accomplishing the task they’ve set out to do" than unnecessarily break their experience -- which is not to say that multi-page web forms don't have their place, but that they should be used consciously and sparingly.

Still a great, great article.

I actually feel the same about sharing photos. Social Networks are only usable for me because I assume everything is public. Once I tried to organize a small party with G+ and accidentally invited the whole internet. Luckily G+ wasn't so popular back then (maybe still isn't).

Interesting that the bank had the most stable interface. They may be boring but they know their customers well and apparently are doing a good job taking care of their needs. In the end that's what it's all about.

Yep, low cognitive overhead. There is a reason an ATM is on every corner.

Reading through this made me feel sad. I don't know why exactly, I guess just the way he was describing how helpless his mother feels doing these things. My mother is probably the same way.

"She doesn't know what she's doing...she wants to though."

"They fumble frustratingly..."

"She's not confident enough..."

"Am I doing it right?"

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Anyway...the takeaway is great. Especially for iconography. I really, really wish more designers woyuld take this to heart. So many user interface designers are so forward thinking and fashionable in their methods that all they do is sex everything up, completely alienating users that just don't get it - and they can't be blamed for that.

There is such a thing as taking design out of the way of users. But at the same time, your design is not their responsibility. It can be their problem, however.