A lot of software designers strive to make their software as easy to use as possible. Often, the assumption is that the simpler – and the fewer user interface elements the software has – the easier it is to use. Often, this is wrong.
When software is very minimal, it becomes incredibly hard to use because you cannot find the UI elements you are looking for anymore. Easy to use does not mean stripping away UI elements. It means making the things that a user wants to do easily findable. Often, this means cluttering the user interface. However, when you clutter the user interface, you again hide thing (like things get hidden in an untidy room).
So good software has to achieve two primary things:
1. Know what the user is going to look for
2. Make this thing easy to find at all times
Once the two above are achieved, then the software is easy to use, irrespective of how the user interface looks like.
This post first appeared on Mark’s Medium.
Mark Essien is the founder of Hotels. Follow him on Twitter here.
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