Practice / How people actually use software
Designing for humans
Good design starts from how people actually meet software, in the middle of a busy day with whatever attention they have left.
The start of a busy day#
Most people meet new software at the start of a busy day, with a queue of work already waiting and whatever attention they have left.
Whatever a team ships has to work for that person, in that moment.
The window for change is very small#
Any change runs against the instinct to keep doing what worked yesterday, and habit, time pressure and fear of breaking something all strengthen it.
A new capability has to feel like it was always there, so the old path has to keep working. If the first thing someone sees after an update is an instruction to configure something, the update has already lost them.
Attention is the constraint#
The person configuring the system is the same person handling everything else that day. They have minutes to spare, so anything the system can work out, it should work out itself. Controls that don’t matter right now can stay out of sight.
Defaults are the experience#
Most people never change a default, so for most of them the default is the product. The design time belongs there, more than on the customization few people open.
Recognition over recall#
People recognize their own data instantly and have to work to recall system concepts. So a screen works best when it shows real names, dates and values.
Picking from existing values is easier than typing into an empty box, and an internal ID never needs to appear where a name exists.
Prevent the error#
The more useful question is how someone avoids reaching the error at all. A screen that could be empty can open already filled in, and anything that has to exist before a screen works can be created quietly.
Consistency trains intuition#
A pattern learned once is expected everywhere. Every inconsistency costs learning time twice: once to notice, once to remember which context you’re in. If something looks different, people assume it works differently.
Finished work stays finished#
A completed record is a piece of history people rely on. If an automated process can quietly overwrite one, people stop trusting every record in the system.
Back to the start of the day#
When these hold, the person opening the product at the start of a busy day finds it working like yesterday, with less to remember.