(Source: have been drunk many times, and used a computer.)
I remember the first time I read this post, the message really stuck with me. "The user is drunk" is a brilliant line.
That being said, I don't think every website or tool needs to aim for the lowest common denominator.
Any application that will be used occasionally with the goal of not using it as quickly as possible should work this way.
A counterexample would be e.g. retail POS software, which should be optimized for minimum work and maximum responsiveness for trained users.
I understand GP's "I don't think every website or tool needs to aim for the lowest common denominator" in two ways:
1. This rule isn't an excuse to stop raising the bar when it comes to interaction design ("drunk people won't notice the difference anyway").
2. Some machines should only be operated when absolutely sober and the interface should reflect that requirement ("don't drink and drive!").
I've recently been reading up on the science of learning, and I realized I never considered what intuition meant to me. Merriam-Webster lists it as:
> a: the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference
> b: immediate apprehension or cognition
> c: knowledge or conviction gained by intuition
If I could frame the thought of my original comment in terms of intuition, it would be:
All software should be intuitive, at what point that intuition is built differs.
For widest adoption, that software should be immediately intuitive to the widest group of people.
For maximum efficiency in a given (usually professional) domain, that software should allow a user who has built up their intuition to effectively merge with the machine.
I don't think one precludes the other, and a lot of the best software is immediately understood by a common user while having features for power-users. I do think there's a tradeoff to some degree though. If you're building a very specific technical tool, perhaps you can assume the user is a drunk programmer, but not a drunk grandmother. As in, the expected level of intuition need not be at the lowest common denominator.
If it was "ill test your site when I next come home from a big night out" it may be OK.
One of the things I learned is that my review will be worse than useless if I am not having a good time the night I review it. I'll feel bad for underperforming, you'll feel bad for having a stressed, depressed drunkard on the line, and no one's knowledge of UX and the world is improved. So, I've made a few rules. One: I never drink alone. That means I need to ask friends whether they're up for a night out. I normally pay for their drinks, too. Two: I never schedule in a rush. That means that I now commit to a general two-week turnaround, but it can be longer than that, at times, and there's nothing I'm willing to do about it to make it faster.The gsfonts package comes with a fontconfig file that automatically aliases `cursive` to the Z003 font, which is also what the browser shows me.
$ fc-match cursive
NotoSans[wdth,wght].ttf: "Noto Sans" "Regular"
My experience is that Firefox picked up every change to `~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf` so far, immediately after I ran `fc-cache -f` and then restarted the browser.
exactly how it becomes when sufficiently drunk
[1] https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/551208-rotate-letters-scri...
There is also so much more to designing for low tech literate than spacing. The accessibility guidelines focus so much on UI and being able to see what is there, but don’t focus enough on understanding what can be done with the website/app. Making sure your buttons actually look like buttons is a decent start but knowing that you can press a button, what it will do as the action, and being able to undo it and go back are so so valuable to helping them learn how to engage with sites.
To the author - hats off! A toast!
NSPG911•4mo ago
throwaway127482•4mo ago