It became clear to me long ago that there is a sliding scale of usability for most things: if you make it easy to use for beginners, it will be frustrating for experts, and if you make it easy for experts, it will be frustrating for beginners.
I use this to explain both why the Windows environment can be so awkward to new users and so unsatisfying to experts: it’s an attempt at compromise.
Surely I can’t have been the first person to put this into words. Is there a name for this “law”? (I’m thinking of something like “Godwin’s Law”)
Though someone may have put it into words before, they may not have called it a “law.” Thus, you can call it your own law. If somebody later shows you there was already such a law, there’s no problem. It happens all the time. Even governments outlaw things that are already illegal. Some famous quotations are attributed to two or more people.
If you declare Knead To Know’s Law, and it turns out to be Pennsagelthorp’s Law from 22 years before, a few pedants may point and laugh, but most people won’t know who Pennsagelthorp was.
Just yesterday, I saw something credited to Mark Twain that another source says is from Josh Billings. Half of all haughty, clever Britishy quotes have been lent to Winston Churchill at one time or another.
I don’t know a name for it, but there is a pithier way we engineers like to say it: “If you make something idiot-proof, then only an idiot will use it.”
The opposite of it is called “artichoke programming”. I’ve heard Photoshop described this way: beginners can find the tools they need and use them, and as one’s proficiency grows, they can get deeper into the complexities of the program as they need to.
I’m trying to think what the opposite of that would be. Something that’s unsatisfying on both ends.
Maybe an avocado? Tough skin, nice middle, but a hard pit in the middle?