The requirement that end-users read documentation is a sign of UX design failure

Thursday, July 13. 2006

The requirement that end-users read documentation is a sign of UX design failure

The web application which I'm working on now requires users to read user manual to use, which means that our solution is nowhere close to perfect. Most of the times, tasks should be intuitive enough to be carried out without detail guidances. This is what user's looking for, they just don't care how comprehensive your manual is, they merely want to get their things done. User experience is especially important to Internet-based web application, where most users are just normal user without special training for the system. When you're designing human interface, do you really consider yourself as a user? This might explain why Windows is better than Linux.

Posted by Steven Yong in computer at 08:37 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

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That's why, we have user review sessions more so esp for those apps which rely heavily on UI interaction for the user.

Well, we usually "try" to think like a "dumb" user and design UI screens in a more intuitive manner. Now, with new advancements in AJAX (Web 2.0), I would expect to see more friendly UI for the web-based apps.

Anyway, Linux evolved from *nix platforms which by "default" didn't have much nice UI to begin with. In fact, most of the time, the hardcore *nix guys would play around with X-windows and widgets to customize their "workstation".

Since Linux evolved from such an environment, well, I'm not surprised that their UI is still so user-unfriendly after all these years. However, some Linux vendors are trying to make it more friendly from Linspire(not-free) to Ubuntu.

It took them a while to get the idea though...

#1 Angie Tan (Homepage) on 2006-07-13 18:02 (Reply)

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