[IxDA Discuss] can we make it to easy?

[Andrei Herasimchuk]

On May 2, 2008, at 5:23 AM, mark schraad wrote:

> I don't find Adobe products to be particularly user friendly

That's certainly a loaded term, isn't it? "User friendly." Which user  
and what constitutes "friendly?"

> I found my self wondering if, for professional tools, there is  
> greater adoption,
> product loyalty and stickiness in leaving a certain amount of  
> difficulty in the UI?

Another loaded way of thinking about it. Be careful. You can't have a  
good discussion approaching it this way.

Photoshop is and never was intentionally made "difficult." And to this  
day, I hate a few aspects of how it does things (and always have, even  
when I was working on it) but overall, it's still a world-class tool  
that has not been surpassed by anyone else trying to solve the same  
problems. To that end, Photoshop is actually pretty easy to a lot of  
things once you have learned how to use it. In fact, Photoshop got its  
start being easier to use than what else was available at the time,  
like Letraset ColorStudio. Over time, as Photoshop became a mission- 
critical production tool for a broad set of industries -- from print  
to the web to film to even NASA research -- it started to add more and  
more complicated features. As with anything that starts simply and  
adds more functionality, keeping it under control can become a  
problem. I personally think Photoshop has done a better job than most  
containing that feature bloat, while acknowledging that is does indeed  
have feature bloat.

But Photoshop was going to add more features like it or not. The  
business demanded it. Users demanded it. And the nature of capitalism  
demands it.

Given that, if anyone thinks they can make a rich, complicated,  
industrial strength tool "easy to use" and if that measuring stick is  
using anyone you may know who is not a professional in the particular  
industry the tool is designed for, I wish you the best of luck on that  
path to insanity. It's just an entirely inappropriate way to approach  
the design problem.

Complicated things will always be complicated, by nature. Your task as  
the designer of such complicated features and tools is to not make  
them more complicated than they already are. But trying to make  
inherently complicated things "easy to use" is really just wishful  
thinking. And making them "user friendly" requires very specific  
metrics on who the "user" is and what they think is "friendly."

> The thinking goes... if the process is to easy, then everyone can do  
> it and it erodes my (the professional user's)
> value in the marketplace.

I know of no one who has ever said that or thinks like that. Further,  
I can certainly tell you that no one on the Photoshop team ever  
thought along those lines.

As for a related version of my opinion of this topic, I wrote about a  
long time ago:
http://www.designbyfire.com/?p=10

-- 
Andrei Herasimchuk

Principal, Involution Studios
innovating the digital world

e. andrei at involutionstudios.com
c. +1 408 306 6422