Charlie Brooker in The Guardian…
“I love a complicated TV remote. They should have more stuff on them: dials and joysticks and flashing lights. I dream of a remote with its own mouse.”
Charlie Brooker’s rants in the guardian are usually entertaining, and I’m always delighted when they touch on user experience.
This one is a giggle because some of the readers seem to have take Charlie seriously.
“I couldn’t agree more. Technology is the one area in which people are proud to be utterly ignorant and helpless. No one would say ‘I can’t feed myself, and I have no control over my bladder, because it’s just too complicated’ but not knowing how your phone works is a badge of honour for many. I’ve asked my mother point-blank ‘You honestly think a few hours of learning how to use the remote is less appealing than not being able to use the telly?'”
“I completely agree with the whole customisation thing. I customise my PC settings to the nth degree and get unnecessarily irritated by my nearly entire office who still have the default settings for screensaver, etc.. How people can handle the bright blue XP default skin is completely beyond me.”
Scroll through the comments and have a look (also worth it for the hilarious examples).
I guess it highlights this point: to people who have a strong aptitude for technology and enjoy working with it, the subject of user experience seems bizarre and pointless. These people are very often the ones who design and build the interfaces we use. I often end up working with them…
“Do we really have to cater for these idiots who don’t know what they are doing?” they ask me, exaggerating the problem for effect.
“Yes,” I reply, “because those ‘idiots’ constitute most of your target market and their money will pay your salary.”
The antidote is usually a round of usability testing. Watching real folk try out and struggle with the prototype product has a very sobering effect.
Charlie puts forward an alternative…
“And if people still refuse to learn, let’s force them into it. Replace all supermarkets with complex remote-control vending machines that dispense food only if you can successfully navigate your way through a 25-tier menu system. And make it illegal to pass the food to anyone else. Before long, we’ll starve the idiots out of existence; manufacturers will never have to simplify anything ever again, and we’ll enjoy a golden age of buttons and options and adjustable sliders and a/v input connector 1. Now that’s progress.”