Re: [Usability] User knowledge level setting

[Bryan Clark <clarkbw clarkson edu>]

On Mon, 2004-03-01 at 00:05 -0500, Daniel Brodie wrote:

> > Many users, when presented with an interface that will hide 
> > functionality from them, will tend to choose expert.  Users don't tend 
> > to like the idea that their applications are hiding something from 
> > them, or that the application thinks that they're too dumb to be able 
> > to use all of the functionality in the application.
> 
> I would also like to add that many times a user uses an app on a novice
> level, but once in a long while they need an advanced feature. So to use
> it, they woul dhav eto switch to the advanced user mode, navigate an
> interface they are not familiar with, find the feature they want to use,
> and then bring it back to novice.

This is a big problem with adaptive user interfaces, the designers have
forced a certain feature set which they determined was advanced,
intermediate or novice.  However those feature sets don't always match
the features the user is looking for at a certain state of use in the
application.

I don't know of an easy way to solve this problem and I know there are a
lot of people working on it right now.  User Interfaces for All and
Universal Usability are a couple conferences that are devoted to this
kind of topic, enabling all users.  You might like to look at the
proceedings of those for some ideas.  

> This is solvable using somthing like MS uses for dynamically changing
> menus based on usage, but needless to say, that is a very bad idea for
> many reasons.

I think Alan brought this up; that actually most users do not like
interfaces that dynamically change on them.  Controlled and predictable
interfaces are desired far above interfaces that try to match needs.
It's not that dynamic interfaces are not possible, but it's extremely
difficult to determine the dynamic settings and users become very
aggravated when the settings go even slightly wrong.  Unlike many
usability issues that can often be solved with a statistically correct
default, dynamic interfaces need to be correct every time or they are
frustrating.

~ Bryan