2025-05-31
Designers as Teachers
The most common way to imagine user interface design — and design in general — is one in which the designer is in direct communication with the end user. This helps us contextualize our relationship with them and abstracts away many problems.
Reality is more complicated. The barriers between the two parties are enormous and the user only interacts with imprints of our intentions. To view design as a simplified one-way communication channel leads to designers discarding important questions:
- Who is the user? We of course cannot know this since we’re designing for everyone.
- What if things go wrong? We cannot diagnose the problem since we’re not there.
- What if despite all of our efforts, the user gets lost or confused?
- What if they do something we can’t predict?
It leads us to assume that the only way to design is by building clear paths that as many people as possible can walk on. If someone can’t climb the stairs or they can’t find their way back on the road, they’re a lost cause. The only fix is to push an update. To rebuild the path with a ramp, to add more guardrails. There are no short-term remedies.
Designers are teachers. Not of users, but the tools we create. We tell them what to do when things go right. In the same way, we can tell them what to do when they go wrong. We can tell them how to adapt. For each perfect user flow, we should imagine three imperfect ones. This will help us shape the perfect path, sure, but it will also help us teach the computer how to handle undesired situations. It makes us ask questions like:
- For those that don’t understand the language, how hard is it to translate the interface?
- When confused, can the user ask the computer what do to? Who do they have to ask?
- What if they misunderstand something? How long before they realize they did?
- What if the software crashes? How does it explain itself to the user?
We should teach computers to adapt to users, not the other way around.