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917 points cryptophreak | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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matheusmoreira ◴[] No.45761796[source]
Over the years I've gotten really tired of this obsession with "normal people" and not just because I'm one of the so called power users. This is really part of a growing effort to hide the computer away as an implementation detail.

https://contemporary-home-computing.org/RUE/

That's what "UX" is all about. "Scripting the users", minimizing and channeling their interactions within the system. Providing one button that does exactly what they want. No need to "scare" them with magical computer technology. No need for them to have access to any of it.

It's something that should be resisted, not encouraged. Otherwise you get generations of technologically illiterate people who don't know what a directory is. Most importantly, this is how corporations justify locking us out of our own devices.

> We are giving up our last rights and freedoms for “experiences,” for the questionable comfort of “natural interaction.” But there is no natural interaction, and there are no invisible computers, there only hidden ones.

> Every victory of experience design: a new product “telling the story,” or an interface meeting the “exact needs of the customer, without fuss or bother” widens the gap in between a person and a personal computer.

> The morning after “experience design:” interface-less, desposible hardware, personal hard disc shredders, primitive customization via mechanical means, rewiring, reassembling, making holes into hard disks, in order to to delete, to logout, to “view offline.”

replies(3): >>45762174 #>>45762325 #>>45772709 #
1. balamatom ◴[] No.45772709[source]
Normal people are the problem.

Always have been.

We could argue about the exact value of N, but in the present universe nearly anything that scares at least 1 out of N normies into coming back to their senses is literally a heroic act.

EDIT: You linked a great post btw. Consider: "Rich User Experience" as the experience of being a rich person who uses. It's all right there in the etymology, after all words are also designed artifacts. "You wanna be rich? You gotta be our customer."