Cav's Place

I’ll start this with something Jen once said after being asked to help with basic computer issues one too many times by coworkers: “If I’m not good with cars, I don’t drive.” It’s something that many people, and especially those who design products, should take to heart. That way, maybe we could still reverse this drive to dumb everything down to the lowest common denominator of the largest mass of people that can be found and get back to having powerful and very customizable products readily available for those who’d know what to do with them.
Incidentally, in case anyone failed to see this, releasing products that can be used by people who lack the skills or simply the intelligence to actually use them properly greatly increases the risk of misuse, which can have all sorts of troubling consequences. For one, said users can put themselves at risk, but what’s worse is that they can put others at risk through their behavior as well, whether we’re talking about “real life” risks, such as fire hazards or things that fall apart, or ending up unknowingly spreading malware over the Internet and other networks and attacking the devices used by others who would otherwise know how to keep themselves safe.

You see, products usually come with some things called instructions, which should be read and understood by users before trying to actually do anything with the product itself. That doesn’t mean that products should be unnecessarily complicated to operate, of course not, but it does mean that they should have settings and customization options and require whatever procedures are necessary to unleash their full potential while also allowing themselves to be adapted to the user’s needs and desires. And by this I mainly mean the needs and desires of advanced users, not to mention experts, who are likely to have requirements that are very different from those of the majority. After all, whether we’re talking about software, cars, household appliances or even something like a modular piece of furniture, there is no way to come up with a design and the settings that would work just as well for everyone, nor is it possible to make the most of a product meant only for a general audience. It’s often that some advanced users will even come up with uses for certain products that those who created them didn’t even think of, which are next to impossible to be properly supported by any general design or settings.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that the regular users should be given less importance or forced to put up with a too steep learning curve. They’re the ones the first few sections of any manual or instructions must be written for and the ones most default settings and usage examples should be meant for, offering them the opportunity to make reasonable use of the product while learning about its more advanced capabilities. However, it must be noted that by “regular users” I mean those who are at an intermediate level and the beginners who have the ability and the willingness to learn. Those who are unable to learn or simply unwilling to try should not be catered to in any way, so we won’t end up with a market filled with dumbed down products that take away options from those who’d know what to do with them because others would be frightened of making choices or doing anything without having their hand held all through the process.

Unfortunately, what we now see is just what shouldn’t happen. Products are being dumbed down, options and features are being removed, simply because some people would be scared by them. This can be seen in many cases, but it is clearly most noticeable when it comes to computer software, various simpler and less powerful devices to run said software also appearing with increased frequency. It’s like we’re padding the world, reducing the amount of space available for everyone and taking the possibility of admiring, repainting or even modifying the walls away from those who would know what to do with it, replacing all of that with a wide assortment of padding aimed at those who couldn’t otherwise understand that running right into a wall is likely to injure you.
To put it differently, there was a time when products were simple because they had to be. You had a device or a piece of software that only did one thing because that was all that the technology was capable of at the time, so you pressed a button, it did its job and then you put it away. Then the number of functions and options started increasing and those who knew how to properly “tweak” what they had could do more and more interesting things, which greatly helped all those who were intelligent and creative. Now, however, we’re seeing a reversal of that trend, and not due to any technological limitations but simply because everything around us is being designed more and more for idiots, whether we’re talking about people who actually are like that or about those who simply act like it sometimes.

If a product could theoretically do something, or even just look in a certain way, in the hands of a capable user, it should be able to. The option must not be taken away, nor should it be hidden or otherwise made more difficult to make use of, for fear that offering it directly would scare away a person who lacks the ability or the willingness to make proper use of the product. Beginners should have nice manuals and tutorials where applicable, intermediate users should have default settings and usage examples to make use of whenever they want the product to “just work” quickly or need something to fall back to after they tried something new and it didn’t work to their satisfaction, but that’s it. Even if they are a small minority, the advanced users and the experts should be catered to at least as much as the less skilled ones, and likely even more so. If any functions or customization options can be introduced, they must be introduced and made readily available, while any additional resources that may be left after designing a balanced product should be put into increasing the number of functions, customization options, efficiency and, if applicable, power of the product, not into making it easier to use for those who probably shouldn’t be using it in the first place. In fact, as I said before, stopping such people from using the product entirely would most likely benefit all of us in the long run.