> For example a tool that might be exceptional to use for a professional might be very very bad to use for a consumer and vice versa.
This was known if not widely distributed at least 20 years ago.
UI that is accommodating for beginners is debilitating for professionals, and I don't just mean existing professionals as the author mentions.
As a software developer, I want and have the skills to seek a solution where a set of N steps only takes a couple of keystrokes. For everyone else, the best they can get is muscle memory, and most skilled labor ends up leaning on that kind of skill heavily.
So UI that is heavy on feedback may be slow in several ways. It could literally slow down the process, or it could introduce roadblocks due to imprecision. A keyboard shortcut is almost always the same two keys in the same order. Fine motor control is the only limiter. If I substitute a mouse click, now hand-eye coordination is dominant. The guy who always hits the waste paper basket from across the room might not care, but everyone else is poorer for it.
And the thing is, video games have this problem solved, but we haven't adopted the techniques the way we have for earlier innovations. Take World of Warcraft. You start off with a few dozen activities you can perform. At intervals you add another batch of actions, and you celebrate that milestone by building up a tool bar (action bar) by cherry picking the set that speaks to you.
New actions and new ways to manage the actions you have are available as addons, and the very best players don't have the largest number of addons, but the ones they do have are reliable, and they all complement each other.
And every once in a while, an action that is very popular gets included in the base UI. Now everyone gets to use it, and 20% of the userbase already was before it ever launched, so you have more resources available to help you figure it out.
This was known if not widely distributed at least 20 years ago.
UI that is accommodating for beginners is debilitating for professionals, and I don't just mean existing professionals as the author mentions.
As a software developer, I want and have the skills to seek a solution where a set of N steps only takes a couple of keystrokes. For everyone else, the best they can get is muscle memory, and most skilled labor ends up leaning on that kind of skill heavily.
So UI that is heavy on feedback may be slow in several ways. It could literally slow down the process, or it could introduce roadblocks due to imprecision. A keyboard shortcut is almost always the same two keys in the same order. Fine motor control is the only limiter. If I substitute a mouse click, now hand-eye coordination is dominant. The guy who always hits the waste paper basket from across the room might not care, but everyone else is poorer for it.
And the thing is, video games have this problem solved, but we haven't adopted the techniques the way we have for earlier innovations. Take World of Warcraft. You start off with a few dozen activities you can perform. At intervals you add another batch of actions, and you celebrate that milestone by building up a tool bar (action bar) by cherry picking the set that speaks to you.
New actions and new ways to manage the actions you have are available as addons, and the very best players don't have the largest number of addons, but the ones they do have are reliable, and they all complement each other.
And every once in a while, an action that is very popular gets included in the base UI. Now everyone gets to use it, and 20% of the userbase already was before it ever launched, so you have more resources available to help you figure it out.