
The user is drunk (2013) [video] - shocks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2CbbBLVaPk
======
cordite
That was quite enjoyable, straight forward, and entertaining for the < 5 min
duration.

I really appreciate putting the user in context of their own lives compared to
as if locked in a room with just that interface in front of them.

Microsoft brings in people a lot (or so I hear) to do user testing. I wonder
how processes can be redesigned to also take "The user is drunk" approach.

~~~
xorgar831
Microsoft sent out a high level research team to a company I worked at to
collect data and feed back on Outlook. During my interview I asked the lead
researcher why he's going through all this trouble to collect data, when he
uses the same product himself, and can pay attention to how he's using it and
see the disconnects between the use cases and the UI directly? It was a fair
question, but I don't recall him having a good answer, other than jotting a
note and agreeing. My follow up question was surly there's innovation in
Microsoft around UIs, why not interview those folks? To which he and his team
laughed and said you don't want any of those folks ideas. Amusingly honest,
which I didn't expect.

~~~
golergka
It's very difficult to switch to a user's perception when you've spent a lot
of time working on a product. Even if you didn't, being a professional in the
field (game design, software development, even being an audio engineer while
listening to music) really distorts your vision — so, if you want to predict
the actual user/consumer's reaction, you'll better ask them.

~~~
uchi
This mentality tends to protrude in a lot of non-software related fields as
well. There are many times for example where I question the layout of the
instruments in my car or why my local grocery store stocks items the way it
does. When you work with software/ui a lot, you tend to develop an internal
organizational logic that's very different from normal users. This influence
becomes quite noticeable when you have to respond to unfamiliar tasks.

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jnorthrop
If you enjoyed that, here[0] is a recording of Will speaking live at a
conference. It is on the same topic, only funnier and expanded to roughly 20
minutes.

[0][http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI9esN3BqbI&list=PLYVXx3zCnkX...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI9esN3BqbI&list=PLYVXx3zCnkX5ka0IkWMC-
bnXIL0-s54_C)

------
bvanvugt
Especially enjoy the "drunk but not dumb" part. Minimal design and big buttons
do not make great UI. It's all about user intuition and guided experiences -
recognizing what a user is wanting to do and helping them achieve it.

~~~
collyw
> Minimal design and big buttons do not make great UI.

I hate stuff that looks pretty, but is makes absolutely no sense unless you
have used it previously.

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aniijbod
Sensitivity to the user's emotions, and thus their capacity to feel insulted
by such things as simplicity, explanation and repetition, is not an excuse for
failing to address the need for simplicity, explanation and repetition, but
advice to interface designers on the need to be both relentlessly explicit and
yet at the same time not insultingly condescending is both familiar and
unhelpful.

His examples are clear elsewhere in this otherwise thought-provoking talk, but
in the case of reconciling treating the user as 'being drunk' with treating
them as 'not being dumb', I think he leaves the door open to interface
designers not still subjecting their work to sufficiently rigorous scrutiny:
what does a dumb drunk user do that one who was drunk but not dumb would not
do? How drunk do you need to be be to act dumb even if you are smart when
you're sober?

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golergka
Not an eye-opener, but very professional presentation. I've heard this ideas
before and even talked about them myself, but I still enjoyed watching to it,
and I'll definitely use the metaphor afterwards.

------
Permit
It's kind of interesting to take an approach like this and contrast it with
the user experience of something like Vim or Emacs. These editors are
extremely popular despite not making it easy for first time users.

Is this because the target demographic of Vim/Emacs are all power users? It
seems like making powerful tools like these are at odds with treating the user
like they're drunk.

~~~
ggreer
Vim and Emacs are not as popular as you might think. They come installed by
default on most unix systems, but millions of developers go out of their way
to install (and pay for) Sublime Text or Notepad++. And those are dwarfed by
Visual Studio and the IntelliJ-based IDEs (RubyMine, PhpStorm, WebStorm,
PyCharm, Android Studio, etc).

Most of these editors are closed-source, cost money, and aren't installed by
default. Yet Vim and Emacs are so hard to use that they end up being a
fraction of the paid editors' user-bases.

Who am I to claim knowledge of editor usage? Well at Floobits[1] we've made
plugins for Sublime Text, Vim, Emacs, and IntelliJ. We can see how many people
download and use each one. Sublime Text and IntelliJ are by far the most
popular editors. It could be that Emacs and Vim users _really_ don't like to
collaborate, but it seems more likely that simply fewer people use them.

I'm not trying to hate on Vim and Emacs. Once people do learn them (and
heavily customize them with plugins), they are very productive. And Vim and
Emacs aren't going anywhere. A developer can learn one of them and use it for
a lifetime. But Vim and Emacs could be much more popular if they put some
effort into improving the first-time experience.

1\. [https://floobits.com/](https://floobits.com/)

~~~
jakejake
I feel like there is this vibe out there that if you don't use emacs then
you're some kind of inferior developer who has to rely on tools to do his/her
work. That perpetuates a myth that everybody of significance is using it. I
don't buy it either.

Just antidotally I've only run into one or two developers who use emacs or vim
as their primary code editor. A lot of people like myself, though are
proficient with one or another shell editor (Vim in my case) that they use
when working directly on a server, or for certain, occasional things where
it's more convenient.

~~~
quanticle
I think we, as developers, go out of our way to perpetuate that myth. How many
times have you heard an experienced developer sneer at a newbie because
they're using Notepad or gEdit? I think that there is definitely a tendency
amongst developers to venerate tools and forget that tools are great only
insofar as they allow you to be more productive. When I'm using software, I
care that it's correct, that its user interface is understandable, that it's
secure, extensible and performant. Approximately none of those things have a
correlation with the editor or IDE used to write the tool.

~~~
judk
It is not possible to be productive in Notepad or gEdit, beyond the occasional
tiny file tweak.

~~~
quanticle
Why not? I'm only slightly trolling. This is exactly the attitude I'm talking
about. We tell newbies that it's not possible to be productive in Notepad or
gEdit, and then hand them a text editor that _doesn 't even write letters onto
the screen when you type_.

~~~
dllthomas
The key word here is actually _editor_. Of course notepad and similar work
perfectly fine if all you are doing is monotonically outputting a stream of
text. When you want to navigate it and make changes, however, they break down
(in comparison with alternatives). For most of us, we spend more time editing
than writing - even in greenfield development.

~~~
quanticle
Right. _That_ is what we should be telling newbies. Not, "It's not possible to
be productive in Notepad."

~~~
dllthomas
For whatever it's worth, that _is_ what I tell newbies when I demand they
switch to "some kind of real editor". As it happens, I'm fairly
nondenominational when it comes to _which_ they use; though I certainly have
my personal preferences my advice is usually to switch to the editor for which
mentoring is most easily available to them.

------
goshx
Great video. I've seen more and more websites with the huge button that "does
what it is supposed to do", but in many cases the companies are leaving out a
description of what their product actually does.

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joshbert
I remember watching this last year. It's one of the best UX videos I've ever
seen, thanks for the reminder.

~~~
sizzle
any more you could recommend?

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mutagen
So in a moment of Sunday night serendipity, I liked the video enough to follow
the link to Will's consultancy site and then his personal site[1], where I was
intrigued enough with the interface to click through a few items. Seeing the
name 'Bankai' took me back at least a couple of years when I spent plenty of
time on the then new thesixtyone.com interface admiring their interface and
gamification of new music discovery, where I had 'hearted' a few of Bankai's
tracks. Will appears to be prolifically creative and dedicated to sharing,
inspiring qualities.

[1][http://willdayble.com/](http://willdayble.com/)

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_mikz
Even the things mentioned there are obvious it is funny and well made!
Congratz!

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sergiotapia
Off-topic: Is the person in the video a little person, or is this some strange
effect of my hangover from last night?

~~~
thomasfrank09
Here's a longer version of his talk that answers your question:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI9esN3BqbI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI9esN3BqbI)

~~~
sizzle
didn't know there was a longer version, thanks for this.

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thisjepisje
I don't remember ever having blurry vision or something like that. Yes I've
been drunk occasionally.

~~~
randywaterhouse
It's perhaps a slight exaggeration, but it is to make his point that "UI dead
simple" >> "Complex UI that you can't tell what's what with a blur".

You may not have had blurry vision... But your attitude may have been as if
you did have blurry vision. Oh there's no big colorful button? X. Oh this
sight is monotone? Boring. X.

His points are prescient, if exaggerated.

~~~
thisjepisje
Of course I get the point, I just found it a bit strange he explained the
blurry screen the way he did. Blurry screens are indeed very useful when
designing UI's.

