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Top-level
 That's what makes the phrase "So easy your mom can use it" particularly awful "Moms" are the kinds of people whose priorities and difficulties are absent from the room when tech designers gather to plan their next product. The needs of "moms" are mostly met by *mastering*, *configuring* and *adapting* technology, because tech doesn't work out of the box for them: https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/19/the-weakest-link/#moms-are-ninjas 14/ 4 comments
Technology can't be understood separately from technology *users*. This is the key insight in Donald Norman's 2004 book *Emotional Design*, which argued that the ground state of all technology is broken, and the overarching task of tech users is to troubleshoot the things they use: https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/29/banjo-nazis/#cuckoos-egg 16/ Troubleshooting is both an art and a science: it requires both a methodical approach and creative leaps. The great crisis of troubleshooting is that the more frustrated and angry you are, the harder it is to be methodical *or* creative. Anger turns attention into a narrow tunnel of brittle movements and thinking. 17/ In *Emotional Design*, Norman argues that technology should be *beautiful* and *charming*, because when you *like* a technology that has stopped working, you are able to troubleshoot it in an expansive, creative, way. *Emotional Design* was not merely remarkable for what it said, but for who said it. 18/ |
Gregory's Server
(As an alternative, I advocate for "so easy your boss can use it," because your boss gets to call up the IT department and shout, "I don't care what it takes, just make it work!" Your boss can solve problems through raw exercise of authority, without recourse to ingenuity.)
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