Categories
Dumb ideas

Unhelpful helpfulness

It seems that most of my usability frustrations these days involve trying to prevent software from helping me in unhelpful ways.

Software wants to finish my sentences for me, correct my word choices, anticipate my formatting decisions, offer me a handy tip on how to do what I am doing.

The experience is like being followed around by a clueless, eager college graduate who just wants to be helpful, but has no idea how, but who somewhere picked up the idea that demonstrating an intent to be helpful is better than doing nothing.

Doing nothing is far better than constantly forcing me to undo unhelpful helpfulness.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *