Every User Lies

I couldn’t pick just one part of Jeff Atwood’s post Every User Lies to quote, because it’s all so good. And it won’t take you long to read.

I think about some of the points he raises here all the time. Users don’t read — not the manual, not the help text, not anything.

So much of what makes people intimidated by the tech they use is this reality, that they don’t read what the screen’s telling them. When friends and family call me for tech support, I sometimes ask them to simply read me the error message they’re encountering. Just the act of reading the error aloud gets them to solve their problem some percentage of the time.

Anyway, read Jeff’s essay.