As designers, we need to strive to simplify users’ lives. That often requires a delicate balance between our effort to make installation of a product easier and making subsequent use of that product easier or better.
Consider the autofill feature for browsers: The user is required to enter and maintain a database of information the browser can then drop into a form at the user’s command. It takes time to set it up, and every time anything changes, it’s just one more record that has to be altered. What’s more, it often fails to work, either not responding or putting incorrect data all over the place.
Apple has simplified the setup process by enabling the user to link Safari’s autoFill to the user’s contact card in his or her address book. However, the ability of Safari to actually fill out a form is just as dismal as it’s ever been, largely because there is no standardization of labels, locations, or anything else in forms.
I have solved the autoFill problem with a more technically complex solution: I use an app called Keyboard Maestro that sits in the background looking for certain key combinations. When it finds one I’ve programmed, it automatically replaces the text I’ve typed with a string of text I’ve previously stored. Setup was definitely more difficult, but now when I open a form and a field calls for my first name, I type, “bbbb” and it’s replaced with “Bruce.” I type “aaaa” and my address appears, “pppp” and my phone number pops into place, etc. It takes me 30 seconds to fill out a form, longer than autoFill would if it actually worked, but this method works on every single form every single time. It saves me time, effort, and frustration.
Often, you can assume that one user in the house will be technically inclined. When you have a trade-off between simplicity of installation/set-up and ease-of-use, get together with your marketing people. If they tell you that you can depend on at least one reasonably clever or sophisticated user, do make life a bit more difficult at first if it will make subsequent use a lot simpler for everyone else. However, expend effort making both installation and operation as simple as possible. That’s the approach that Nest took, where one person in the house must go through a complex and confusing process to tie their products to the Internet, but thereafter the lives of everyone in the house become simper.
(In Nest’s defense, they are doing their best to overcome a major flaw in the way Wi-Fi set up to work. It requires users to leave their normal Wi-Fi and log in to a new “network” with a gobbledygook name which is, in fact, their Nest device. This is a weird, backwards activity that throws most users the first time they encounter it. It also requires their going into the “basement area” of their phone or tablet, a place most users avoid whenever possible. It’s all-around bad, and the committees that oversee the Wi-Fi protocol need to address the issue if connected devices are to take off on an expanded basis.)