I hear this phrase a lot, and even recently, out of my own mouth: “Users are stupid, so we have to dumb this down to the lowest common denominator.” Stop it. Just stop it.
Our job, when designing features and interfaces, is to make them powerful, usable, and understandable. Not to cater to those people too lazy to think. Our job is to make things intuitive. But intuition still requires an individual to want to understand something. It requires an attempt to understand. It requires thought, even subconsciously. We have little power over people’s desire to succeed. We can only provide the tools to do so. So teach people, don’t criticize them.
People aren’t stupid. Really, they’re not. It’s possible they don’t have the same experiences you do, but that doesn’t mean they’re an idiot. Writing people off, and dumbing down utility in the name of stupidity is, well, stupid. Bring people with you, and provide them tools to learn and be successful.
When you exercise, you stretch yourself. You get healthy by pushing past your existing level of fitness. You don’t succeed by dumbing down your workout. You push, you learn, and you get better. We educate users the same way. We must show, explain, and gently push our users to succeed.
And don’t misunderstand. Keep things simple. But simple doesn’t mean stupid. Simple doesn’t mean boring. And simple certainly doesn’t mean standard. It means you can figure it out, even if it takes a minimal amount of thinking.1 Celebrate when users succeed, and don’t patronize them for wanting or needing help.
Again, your users aren’t stupid. They could very easily be intimidated. Nobody likes the unfamiliar. But people love to succeed. So help them. Provide cues, hints, and even invite questions. But don’t dumb it down.
And here’s the real truth: If you’re dumbing down your interface or features because you think people won’t ‘get it,’ you’re hurting the experience of those who are more comfortable in your software. If you don’t provide hints and cues in your interface, you’re intimidating and hurting the experience for people who aren’t as comfortable on the web. Either way, you’re keeping people from learning, and that’s just uncool.
So stop thinking your users are stupid. Teach them, train them, and let them succeed. And in the process, if you let them, they’ll teach you a thing or two as well.
I couldn’t agree more Steve. I think this sort of “dumb it down” thinking is what leads to knee-jerk reaction of “don’t make it scroll”. I think users generally can indeed figure things out and your point about them potentially being intimidated more so than dumb is something i’ve not really thought about yet.
Here here! Oh man, it’s so great to read this, it’s very much in keeping with much of what I’ve been thinking about for a long time now. I’m so sick of designers who always take the safe route because they’re worried people won’t get something unique, powerful, inventive, etc.
I’ve got a post in the works that touches on this, hopefully will go up later this week, but in essence I think a user interface should always meet a users expectations. That’s the bar and it’s good to shoot for that bar as so many people miss it. But beyond that, to exceed those expectations we often need to set new expectations through teaching.
People’s brains want to learn. It’s a fact. If we can use our interfaces to facilitate that, we’ll quickly move from simply meeting expectations to exceeding them.
This is a great article in theory, but I’d really love to see exactly what you’re referring to. What would you consider “dumbing down”?
I worry about overestimating how much time people are going to spend on my website figuring stuff out. In the end, I still want my website to look good, work well, and not be confusing, but I’d hope that keeping things simple wouldn’t be construed as dumbing it down.
@Gene: I like the “don’t make is scroll” type of sites (whenever it’s possible). You can see everything at once.
@Gene Crawford: Thanks! I think intimidation is a huge problem with users and apps today, especially because we make people feel stupid if they can’t just figure something out on their own.
@Keith: Thanks, I can only imagine that this is especially true in game design.
@Tracy Osborn: By ‘dumbing down,’ I mean not doing cool, unique ideas or implementations because they’re ‘non-standard’. I realize this is a fine theoretical line. And one must be cautious not to err on the other side, introducing things simply because one can, not because they should.
But don’t let non-standard interactions scare you because “people won’t get them.” If they’re good, well design, and intelligently architected, people will figure them out. Especially if you help them.
@Steve – Very true. Still, I think there is a whole lot in there that applies to “non-game” interface design. Teaching, using fun as a motivator, etc. I’m going to try and write up some of my thoughts.
@Tracy – In my opinion, if you are meeting a user’s expectations you’re doing fine. However, we can do so much more if we’re willing to take risks with our UIs.
As well, I’ve come across many situations where established patterns and conventions aren’t good enough for what I want to do. What do you do then? Well, those who play it safe will shoe-horn those features into tried and true interactions, potentially lessening the experience. Or worse.
What’s important is to be engaged with your users, know what they want, what they’re willing to learn, etc. If you have that dialogue open you’ll quickly know if you’ve done something that a user doesn’t get. I’d assert that when you’re doing something outside of the established norm you’ll have to be willing to test and iterate to make sure people are learning it AND benefiting from it.
This post should come with a “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should” caveat.
Beautiful article and useful info. And one more thing: i hate scrolling on your website in G Chrome.
@Keith: I agree, any interaction idea should be well conceived and designed, and done so for a reason.
@Designd ideas: I don’t support beta software. :) It’s a rendering bug in the Chrome beta.
Very true and powerful thought. Great read and enlightenment.
I agree, the philosophy is often over used. I think Google has made a more well rounded approach, which is proven in their success: “Engage beginners and attract experts.”
Excellent article. We all encounter uninspired people daily. It is up to those who understand to increase the proliferation of knowledge. There are those who we connect with deeply on levels other than the one we want to teach though. We want them to learn and we try our hardest to show it. When teaching fails, do we tie them to a chair?
Your article is true and resonates in more than the field of website design. If you are familiar with Edward Tufte or Stephen Few, they espouse these principles for information design. Tufte in particular emphasizes not assuming people are stupid, instead removing all the redundant and unnecessary information that clutters and obfuscates the real meaning. He gained a wider national audience with his convincing analysis of how the misuse (and serious dumbing down) of a power point presentation used by NASA to make an important decision led to the shuttle that crashed.
@iesjogogesdgsd, I would bet the average person at NASA has a much higher IQ than the average person in the US, but dumb information made them unable to use that intellect properly. Your comment is probably true, but that just gives programmers a greater responsibility to create information that communicates effectively, so anyone can access it.
Great read…I’m reminded of a quote by Scott Karp…something to the effect of: “In the age of Google…there are no stupid users, only inadequate designs.” This article is an excellent reinforcement of that fact
When you move to the late mainstream/consumer/SaaS markets from early mainstream, you move from geek heaven where people model the application itself, to users that think more in terms of modeling their work and don’t have time to model an application with geek like fascination.
They are not us. They don’t think like we think. They don’t think about the tool. It’s a tool. When did you think about annealing when you used a screwdriver?
Even when we program code frameworks, we must realize that it has to be easier for our users, aka other developers, to use, otherwise they can write their own faster than they can learn to use ours. Same deal. Different. Not us. Not ourselves.
The only thing that one has to realize is that knowledge is not something we are born with. We accumulate it from our environment. Therefore it is really stupid on one’s part if one accuses one’s users that are stupid.
Patience and training can reduce future headaches since trained and knowledgeable users will always help with valuable input.
Thanks for the great post.
I agree with some points – users arent that stupid. There must be an ‘attempt’ on the user’s side to understand something. If you think of it, when graphical user interface was first introduced in the computing scenario, people had to learn something new of a way of interacting with a personal computer. They had to learn the concept of applications, files, file systems, drives, icons, how a double click opens applications from the ‘desktop’ etc. Similarly when learning internet browsing, users need to have learnt the concept of what is a web URL, where to type it in and what to expect. So we need to change the definition of “designing for the lowest common denominator” or “keep it simple stupid because users are stupid” design paradigm to something of a design mantra/guide like "make it powerful BUT easy to learn and intuitive, that is, the step of learning something new (like an interface of a web application) should be able to completed within a short period of time. The ‘learning’ should also be able to be completed in as intuitive and fun a manner as possible.
A lot of the thinking in this post and the responses seems to think of the user as a mysterious creature off in the wilds that we need to figure out through guessing and imagining.
Just make prototypes and test them on people! Much easier and more reliable.
Your article is true and resonates in more than the field of website design. If you are familiar with Edward Tufte or Stephen Few, they espouse these principles for information design. Tufte in particular emphasizes not assuming people are stupid, instead removing all the redundant and unnecessary information that clutters and obfuscates the real meaning. He gained a wider national audience with his convincing analysis of how the misuse (and serious dumbing down) of a power point presentation used by NASA to make an important decision led to the shuttle that crashed.
@iesjogogesdgsd, I would bet the average person at NASA has a much higher IQ than the average person in the US, but dumb information made them unable to use that intellect properly. Your comment is probably true, but that just gives programmers a greater responsibility to create information that communicates effectively, so anyone can access it.
I can’t agree more.
I have been dealing with several past and present clients that think their visitors/users are uninformed and I have even heard the phrase that, "I see our visitors as dumb/stupid so we need to put a “click here” so that they know you’re supposed to click this/that image to go to this/that page."
It’s pretty upsetting to me that so many clients are like this, and that they aren’t willing to push their visitors/users and don’t trust the ability of the person they hired.
Agreed.
It seems that it isn’t that users are stupid, but we build things stupid, without really thinking about how the product should & can be used.
The more usability testing I do, the more & more this becomes apparent.
“make things simple, but not too simple. Just the right amount of simple.” That’s what I got from reading this article. Well, duh. No real lesson lernt here…
The truth is, people aren’t stupid, but they don’t want to think about how to use stuff. They want to focus on what they’re doing, not on how the tools work. Learning how something works is an investment an it pays off only when you use it regularly. Few people will want to invest in figuring out a website when they first visit it.
Making things simple means maintaining a learning curve: basic functionality for everyone, advanced features for those who are experienced. But it is important that the advanced features don’t get in the beginner’s way.
lots of ignorant characters would call people they don’t know as “intimidating” instead of getting to know a person in the first place.
I agree
Users are simple not stupid.
Then you must make your Page simple and easy to handle.
Usability is very important.
I think I read this last month, but definitely worth the re-read.
And Steve, I love that you put footnotes in the margin inline. I compulsively want to know what footnotes say immediately, but hate flipping pages or scrolling to the footer and then trying to find my place again. Well done, thanks! :)
Play to the audience’s strengths… it’s just showbiz
I partly agree. It’s true that you shouldn’t make things too siple or too standard. But that’s not so for every app or website or whatever.
Almost with every new project we get content from our clients for these pages:
• About Us
• FAQ
• Benefits
This information then is worked into contextual design, and in almost all cases, we eliminate the FAQ and Benefits pages entirely. The benefits and FAQ information is worked into the product/service pages.
Take the time, explain the value
Spend time editing the content you get from your clients — explain to them how this information fits into more relevant sections. Explain to them how it will help their users be guided to information rather than forced to search for it.
Making each page an island won’t get the user the information they are looking for.
Simplifying, and eliminating out-of-context will make each page work together in a friendly and engaging way.
I 100% absolutely agree with simplification. This is just how we put it into practice. Spend time on 37 Signals website for inspiration on simplicity (in addition to this site & Clear Left) – a good critique of these sites can get anyone thinking of ways to simplify their own projects.
A problem that is exhibited by the demo:
The very first example, shouldn’t “well designed” pull up (what is ironically) the very first entry as a result.
:[ It wants some attention too!
Totally agree, tired of the old users are stupid adage. If users were stupid there would be no hope you can’t dumb down enough for them.