Tenacious Creations

 Let me start this post with a little true anecdote from my past. The year was 1998 and I was in the military, most of our computers were still running Windows 95. Every year as a junior or senior NCO you are required to write personnel evaluation reports (PER’s) and in ‘98 we were supposed to write them with a piece of software from People-Soft.

 Now PER time was dreaded by most people who had to write them as they have to follow a strict format and it is very time consuming. Frustrations run high. While sitting at my computer I heard banging and cursing coming from the office next to me. It seems a certain Master Corporal was having major problems with his computer. So I went other to offer some assistance. He looked at me and innocently said “Where the fsck is the “any” key?”. Well truth be known I thought he was joking, but he was dead serious. After some difficulty explaining to him that he could hit any to key to continue not just the “any” key he was on his way.

 So what does this have to do with creativity and programming? Well as programmers, bloggers, website developers, and even graphic artists we must always remember to keep the end user or our audience in mind. Coders tend to like to build these awesome applications with all these super fancy additions and features, that to a coder seem awesome (take EMACS for example). However to an end user this can be very intimidating. Computer and technology savvy people tend to ignore this.

 The average computer user just wants the computer to work for them and do what they want it, that is it. They don’t care if their editor / word processor can tell them the tides or psychoanalyze them. They just want to be able to create their document with no hassles. They average computer users seems to be always afraid that something they can do will destroy their computer and they will lose everything.

 These are the people who make up the greater part of your market share. make sure you think about them when you design your new software, website, or ad campaign. If your application requires a lot of data input from the user, like say a word processor, make sure it automatically saves the data at timed intervals. Your users won’t remember to keep saving after they have made changes. If your website is highly graphical and all your links are graphics make sure these are easily distinguishable for your users. If you are writing a blog post about technology for the average person be careful with the terms and acronyms you use. For example most tech savvy people know what WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) means. But to an average user a statement like “Use a WYSIWYG Editor.” Translates to “Use the editor called WYSIWYG.”

Think of the users of your software, the readers of your website, the viewers of your graphics as customers. You want to make the customer/user as comfortable as you can and provide what they need with out confusing them. Remember they do not need to know how the machine operates to use it (not that it wouldn’t help immensely if they did know how it works). Look at the automobile, you don’t need to know how an automatic transmission works, in order to drive one.

 Remember the KISS principle - Keep it Simple, Stupid. The software that gets the most use is simple to operate, a web browser for example or even windows. A person new to digital photography who opens up Photoshop is going to be overwhelmed with the myriad of options and tools. They might just want to fix red eye, they have no need of layer mask, filters etc.. Just look at software the comes with an entry level digital camera its always very simplistic.

 In short remember the any key syndrome.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!