Thought: Design rhetoric
Here is a conversation that I have all too frequently. It usually starts with a request that goes something like this.
“The user is asking for this field.”
Me: “Why?”
“They had it in their old system.”
Me: “What do they do with that information?”
“Well, they report on it.”
Me: “Okay, but how does that help them do their job?”
Puzzled look.
I seem to go through this same basic conversation over and over again. Partly this is a tale of saving the users from themselves, but there’s something else to consider. That field in some form may seem innocuous, but it’s going to cause a user distress. The user requesting the field will love you for it, but think about your other users. They are going to see that field and possibly say to themselves:
- I don’t know what that field is for.
- Why don’t I know what that field is for?
- Should we be tracking that information?
- What am I supposed to put in there?
You may be sitting there reading this thinking I am being hyperbolic, but I have seen the anxiety in users’ eyes. I am only trying to caution you. Whether you want to believe it or not, your users trust that you know what’s right for them. As Designers we need to be mindful of every element we introduce else our designs suffer the death by a thousand cuts.
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