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0 pointsmLuby4y ago0 comments

> its a flawed expectation to get it right the first time.

If your toilet overflows when you push the lever down and flushes when you pull the lever up, you'll learn pretty quickly how to use it. And other users will too, after they screw up or after you carefully explain so they're sure to understand. But it's just a shitty design! The fact that you've learned to deal with it doesn't excuse it or mean it shouldn't be fixed for all future users.

I want to get it right the first time; I don't expect to only because I've been hurt too many times by shoddy UIs. A good UI, whether a GUI, API, CLI, or other TLA, guides users through their workflow as effortlessly as possible by means of sensible defaults, law of least surprise, and progressive reveal of power features.

Relevant http://xkcd.com/1168

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tsimionescu4y ago

There's still no way around having to learn complex features. For most software, building a really simple first try is very easy, but almost certainly useless.

Once you need to actually do something useful, uunavoidable complexity sets in and all of a sudden defaults and such don't really help anymore.

Some people try to push defaults further with templates and wizards, but that often still doesn't really work for your particular use case, and also makes you first search through many options before realizing you actually need to go for the scary blank one.

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