UXmatters: The Perpetual Super-Novice
Just thought I’d point to my latest UXmatters article. My idea for this article is that people get stuck at a certain point of understanding a system, and fail to progress beyond a few areas of a rich application.
After initially becoming somewhat familiar with a system, people often continue using the same inefficient, time-consuming styles of interaction they first learned. For example, they fail to discover shortcuts and accelerators in the applications they use. Other people learn only a small portion of a product’s capabilities and, as a result, don’t realize the full benefits the product offers. Why? What can operating systems, applications, Web sites, and devices do to better facilitate a person’s progression from novice to expert usage?
It’s an idea I’ve been kicking around for a while. Since I owed UXmatters a column, I thought I’d explore it a bit. I’m still working it out.
December 6th, 2007 at 10:18 am
Great writing, and a good read. Thanks. Love when articles are heavy on the content…
December 12th, 2007 at 8:31 am
I have been toying with the idea of having some intelligence built into the system that keeps track of the number of times a user performs a given action, within the context of that program. After x number of times, the application would ask if the user would like to learn a better way to perform that action. This method is action-packed with possible user experience landmines, but the idea of training people to expert without much effort on their part interests me.