No one wants to use your software
“People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter inch hole!”
—Theodore Levitt
I read this today in the 2013 edition of The Design of Everyday Things, and oh goodness, is it true. For the vast majority of people, software is a means to an end. How easily we geeks forget that. The world is not like us.
My mother doesn't want to use Facebook. She wants to connect with relatives. She certainly doesn't want to remember her password, complete multi-factor authentication challenges, create a profile, change her settings, add people as friends, upload images, check her notifications… She wants to connect with relatives. What we techy types call “fun,” what we enjoy perfecting and tinkering with, my mom calls “garbage that gets in the way of what I actually want to do.”
No one wants to use your software. Well, no one but the geeks like us, and even we don't want to tinker with everything. Most people most of the time just want to get things done.
How different would software look if we remembered that?
On the password front, I'm certainly not suggesting we sacrifice digital security for user experience—being hacked isn't a great experience, anyway—but let's use something better, like passkeys. They're just as secure, if not more secure, and they're practically invisible. People hardly even notice themselves using them. That's a good thing.