"I started writing Lauren Ipsum by looking for ideas that I understood well enough to explain to a nine-year-old child."
Three decades ago I started a company that created a word processor. As part of our usability testing, we gave our little 100 page manual to an eight year-old boy and told him to write a letter. A couple of hours later he finished and we pronounced our endeavor a success. Even our customers were happy with how easy it was to use.
For our next release we produced a real manual -- 400 pages long. We were inundated with complaints about how difficult our product was to use now. Lesson: keep the story simple. Make the advanced features emergent and discoverable.
Three decades ago I started a company that created a word processor. As part of our usability testing, we gave our little 100 page manual to an eight year-old boy and told him to write a letter. A couple of hours later he finished and we pronounced our endeavor a success. Even our customers were happy with how easy it was to use.
For our next release we produced a real manual -- 400 pages long. We were inundated with complaints about how difficult our product was to use now. Lesson: keep the story simple. Make the advanced features emergent and discoverable.