Which is more complicated — using a personal computer or driving a car? For driving, we give you lessons and make you take a test to confirm you know how not to get yourself (or others) in trouble. While the repercussions of using a personal computer improperly are not as dire, we dump you in, cold, and expect you to get everything. Often UI designers are optimizing for that very first experience because we believe that the ideal is that everything is just obvious.

In fact though, with every successive day of usage, the percentage of “first-time” usage gets smaller and smaller until it’s a tiny fraction of a fraction. And ultimately, in most cases, people think things are “simple” to use, once they already know how to use them.

Makes me wonder if we’re focused on the right set of problems.

Image courtesy of SoundAndFury.