Re:If too many users are wrong, it's probably your fault (2011)
by PhasmaFelis on Wednesday January 13, 2016 @02:54AM
(#10892909)
The purpose of good UI is to be usable by the target user. If the target user is a blithering moron, then your UI needs to target blithering morons, or else it's bad UI in that context.
Ranting about the stupidity of your users is certainly therapeutic, but it doesn't excuse you from serving them and doing your job.
Re:If too many users are wrong, it's probably your fault (2011)
by mrweasel on Wednesday January 13, 2016 @05:31AM
(#10893417)
>The idea that a lot of people doing the same thing can't be wrong is wrong: yes they can be wrong.
There's a Danish entertainment that once asked: "The majority always right, or are they just the most (largest group of people)?"
I don't buy the logic that if the most people believe something, or can't work something, then they are somehow the ones that get it right.
The idea that a lot of people doing the same thing can't be wrong is wrong: yes they can be wrong.
The solution which was put in reflects the view that it was them all along. Everything is exactly the same in the UI, except that the subset of the user base which does a silly thing now gets feedback that they are doing a silly thing. No design change has taken place so that fewer (or no) users actually click on the images!
If the developer believed that these are intelligent people who have a reasonable mental model of the system, but who are somehow visually fooled by the layout into clicking on inactive elements, then a true design change would have followed.
The goal of reducing support calls was achieved, of course.