Affect of Experience

How Experience Changes Experience

Recognition vs. Memory:

How many different icons could you name off the top of your head, right now?

How many could you recognize if I gave you a list?

If you’re a normal human, the second answer would be a lot more.

If you design your interface so people have to ask for something — like search — they will only use the features they can remember. That means that, over time, they will use fewer and fewer features. Not more and more.

If your users are forced to deal with a large amount of information, give them some suggestions of categories or some other kind of help to remind them where to look!

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Learning is Slow. Habits are fast.

“Onboarding” is the word we use to describe the step-by-step lessons, or very simple introductions to a new interface. It helps new users find the main features easily, and avoid confusion.

However, what happens when the user has used your interface for 2 years?

Habits are created very quickly in your user’s mind, so you should design a “fast way” to do key features, which might not be as obvious. Power users will take the time to learn them for the sake of extra productivity. Keyboard shortcuts, right-click options, and all the little Twitter tricks like “.@” tweets are examples of this idea.