[Design] Catering for beginners, experienced user and considering change and change costs.

[Jan Dittrich]

Hello Design List,

One challenge I have in my daily work is combining the needs of beginners
and "function experts", people who are used to a specific function/UI.

The "experts" are used to a specific UI and don't like to see changes (for
understandable reasons, even if the current UI has quirks, they are used to
the current state and would have costs of relearning)

On the other hand, we know that some functions/UIs are really hard to grasp
for non-experts. This could be new members of the community, but it could
also be established members of the community who touch a function only from
time to time ("perpetuate intermediates", as Cooper says in "About Face")
and/or who transition into a new role (Editor becomes Admin and has now new
functions to use) – which I find important to mention, since it breaks the
"experts" vs. "noobs" narrative.

I wonder if you have any practices or examples that show how our UIs can be
made easy to get for beginners, efficient for experts and build and
introduced them a way that ensures that those who know an existing UI feel
it is worth to adapt to changes.

Kind Regards,
Jan
--
Jan Dittrich
UX Design/ User Research

Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
Phone: [phone]
http://wikimedia.de

Imagine a world, in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. That‘s our commitment.

Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V.
Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter
der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnÃŒtzig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt fÃŒr
Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/029/42207.

[Isarra Yos]

Something I've found is that often the problems that prevent beginners
from progressing are the same, or closely related, to the pitfalls that
impact the experienced users. So going to the experienced users and
asking them what's slowing them down can be a very good place to start -
address that, with a focus on beginners as well, and you serve both with
the same fix. Experienced users feel that their needs have been
addressed and that they were actually included in the process (because
they were!), beginners have an easier thing to work with, and the path
from beginner to experienced is also facilitated because there's no split.

This is something we've tried to apply to CollaborationKit, an extension
intended to simplify the creation and maintenance costs of WikiProjects,
which you can see an example of here:
https://wpx.wmflabs.org/w/index.php/WPX:WikiProject_Women_scientists (a
recreation of an existing wikiproject on the english wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women_scientists).
Click on 'manage hub' and instead of a page with wikitext and a bunch of
templates, just edit a form, with the content on subpages. All the
templating is handled for the users, so even if they do know how to deal
with them, they don't need to. We're still working on testing, and a bit
between segments of development at the moment, so who knows how well it
works in practice, but yeah. That's what we have so far.

-I

Post by Jan Dittrich
Hello Design List,
One challenge I have in my daily work is combining the needs of
beginners and "function experts", people who are used to a specific
function/UI.
The "experts" are used to a specific UI and don't like to see changes
(for understandable reasons, even if the current UI has quirks, they
are used to the current state and would have costs of relearning)
On the other hand, we know that some functions/UIs are really hard to
grasp for non-experts. This could be new members of the community, but
it could also be established members of the community who touch a
function only from time to time ("perpetuate intermediates", as Cooper
says in "About Face") and/or who transition into a new role (Editor
becomes Admin and has now new functions to use) – which I find
important to mention, since it breaks the "experts" vs. "noobs" narrative.
I wonder if you have any practices or examples that show how our UIs
can be made easy to get for beginners, efficient for experts and build
and introduced them a way that ensures that those who know an existing
UI feel it is worth to adapt to changes.
Kind Regards,
Jan
--
Jan Dittrich
UX Design/ User Research
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
Phone: [phone]
http://wikimedia.de
Imagine a world, in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. That‘s our commitment.
Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.
V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts
Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnÃŒtzig
anerkannt durch das Finanzamt fÌr Körperschaften I Berlin,
Steuernummer 27/029/42207.
_______________________________________________
Design mailing list
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design