Hard-to-use interfaces considered beneficial (some of the time)

Authors:
Yann Riche;Nathalie Henry Riche;Petra Isenberg;Anastasia Bezerianos
Affiliations:
Riche Design, Seattle, WA, USA;Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, USA;University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada;École Centrale, Paris, France
Venue:
CHI '10 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Year:
2010

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Abstract

Researchers in HCI share a common understanding that 'easy-to-use', 'easy-to-learn' and 'intuitive' interfaces are beneficial to users. Designing such interfaces raises challenges and often requires multiple iterations. While we are generally prompt to discard more hard-to-use interfaces and smooth out usability issues, we want to raise here the issue of their potential benefits. We de-scribe two cases in which we observed potential bene-fits from introducing barriers for collaborating and communicating with others. We attempt to shed a new light on interfaces with usability "problems" and how these problems may benefit system efficiency and user experience. We end with a discussion of the pros and cons of making systems harder for people to use, and how to integrate this perspective in the design process.