I’m the “tech guru” for many of those who know me, and I’ve seen people of all ages struggle with mobile UIs. There’s two axes with two values, making four categories that I find problems fall into:
- Simple concept + familiar UI: User is at fault (usually a misconception). I rarely see problems in this category.
- Complex concept + familiar UI: User struggles to understand what they’re trying to achieve. A little bit of extra info helps them make sense of the situation. Very easy to help the user over the phone in this situation. Often, thanks to good UI, the user figures it out themselves.
- Simple concept + strange UI: The user knows what they want to do but can’t understand what the UI is conveying, can’t find the UI controls, can’t express what they want via the UI controls, or sometimes don’t even realise something is interact-able. Even if the user understands the concept, they often struggle to succeed after stumbling their way through the app for any length of time, and need assistance. Apple iOS’s “swipe from different corners to get notifications & control panel & home & etc” and “three fingers/hold to do textual things” are good examples of this.
- Complex concept + strange UI: Situations in this category can get so difficult & time-consuming that it’s often easy to just do what the user is asking for on their behalf, or give them a step by step process they can repeat.
The things that make a UI familiar or otherwise are subtle, like what makes a film good or bad.
UI/UX designers come up with all these “clever” ways to do things, like the breadcrumbs interface on the Notion app, but many users simply don’t figure out how to use them. And they don’t think to use an element/gesture when they seek to achieve the very things which that element/gesture achieves.
