Title: The Next Big UI Idea: Gadgets That Adapt To Your Skill
Context: Using UI adaptability to appeal to both power users and novices without alienating either.
Synopsis: Every new feature adds complexity. Only a fraction of your users will ever use that new feature. All included features are necessary. If we take the preceding 3 statements to be true than our job as user experience designers is all but impossible. There are so many contradictory directives that we need to balance when trying to achieve maximum feature richness while simultaneously implementing a clean simplicity that does not overwhelm the UI. One reason this is so difficult is that we tend to only think about the interfaces we design as static and universal, reliving the Sisyphean task of universal design through every iteration. But there is no law that requires this of us, and as our technological baseline affords us ever greater flexibility and responsiveness, even if such a law did exist we should take it upon ourselves to break such an unjust statute every chance we had in the pursuit of experiential freedom.
Best Bit: “User experiences are subjective and dynamic, but by and large, interactive products are not designed to take people’s changing capacity and experience into account.”
via fastcodesign.com
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