[jwdunne]

I think, as tech-savvy, I overestimate what users can do or feel comfortable doing. This makes making things easier a nice challenge.

For example, a colleague needed to check if a link has rel="nofollow". The first solution is to right click on the link and click Inspect element (he uses Chrome). This wasnt a good solution because he gave up as soon as he saw code, despite it highlighting it for him. I wrote up a quick and dirty bookmarklet as a second solution which either shows a green "dofollow" or a red "nofollow" with a black BG. This was earlier this year and he still uses the same dirty little bookmarklet. It made me realise that there are probably thousands of things I take for granted which would slow down an average user almost to a stop.

To me, it seems to unearth these things, you have to question assumptions. I assumed anyone on this planet will have the capacity to right click a link and inspect the HTML and the contents of the rel attribute. I assumed the 10 mins writing the bookmarklet would be a waste of time. I was very wrong.

[netcan]

My first job out of Uni required me to write up little manuals, take them to the customer to show them how to upload products to their e-commerce site, check orders etc.

I'm not a programmer, but I'm fairly technical.

Anyway, actually sitting beside the user as they tried to do things makes you realize how important easy really is. This was using basically off-the-shelf software that I thought was pretty user friendly. But, anything outside of the manual and instruction could not be/was not done.

It isn't really about easy-hard. It's about possible-impossible. There was some Jobs interview somewhere where he described the early (then current) Apple/microcomputer progression in orders of magnitude.

people who could build their own computer from parts >> people who could build it from kits >> people who could write their own software on pre-assembled computers >> people who could use other people's software >> people who could use a GUI-based computer.

You could continue this line to ipad apps. How many people use computers but don't install software (daughters, IT departments, etc do this once per year)? How many use email that someone sets up for them?