Helpability

Michael Tsai:

And no matter how much easier the iPad might be, I don’t think it could overcome the increased difficulty of solving problems at a distance. There’s no way to do screen sharing to fix things or see what [my grandmother is] referring to, and with so many unlabeled icons and “invisible” gestures, communicating interface details via phone would likely be even more difficult than usual.

An interesting aspect of a product's usability: if something goes wrong, how easy is it to help people?

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designed for use cover

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Want to read more like this? Buy my book's second edition! Designed for Use: Create Usable Interfaces for Applications and the Web is now available DRM-free directly from The Pragmatic Programmers. Or you can get it on Amazon, where it's also available in Chinese and Japanese.