[anatnom]

If those users aren't reading the error dialogs anyways, why do the error dialogs need to pander to those users? I wonder if the "make it dumb enough for every user to understand" approach leads to user comprehension plateauing prematurely.

[codeflo]

Shareholder-driven growth targets mean it's no longer good enough to target the 20th percentile users, who might have reading comprehension at a 5th grade level. You have to hit the 10th percentile, or the 5th. Be glad that you still get text instead of pictures.

[latexr]

> Be glad that you still get text instead of pictures.

Even that isn’t a given. I’ve seen banks using emoji in their notifications. Companies are using ML to predict which emoji to change your text to. There are emoji domain names. Etcetera.

[bongodongobob]

Tangentially related, I used to work at a company where the C level was demanding all of our help documents be videos. They couldn't understand that it made them unsearchable, took way more time, did not allow branching or decision making in the processes, if anything in the workflow or even UI changed the entire thing would need to be redone, takes up a ton of space, is not easily skimmable etc. "but it's easier than reading!" "are you telling me you've never learned how to do things on YouTube?" Etc. I refused and resigned not long after.

[sethammons]

I was thinking you could do product demos / help videos combined as an acceptance test suite.

You would programmatically build the self help tutorial like a ui test (use a test browser and it would be like cypress/selenium). You would write a script, (ai) text to speech, and you could even respond to user input for branching.

These would be, de facto, your acceptance test suite and your tutorials will flag when they break on new ui developments, helping to keep them up to date

[bongodongobob]

Sure, if they want to hire someone. Ain't nobody got time for that.