Jul

27

topyli’s law and topyli’s second law

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On technical IRC channels, mailing lists, Usenet groups (remember those?) and Web forums, you often learn a lot of interesting and useful stuff. If you hang in there for long enough, you’re going to learn some more universal truths as well. I have learned a couple of things that I think i may have tweeted about some time or another, but would like to document here too, for future application.

topyli’s law:
When a user asks for help on a problem (s)he is having with $PROGRAM, another user will immediately suggest they switch to $ANOTHER_PROGRAM and use that instead.

topyli’s second law:
When you add an “Advanced” button or tab in the configuration dialog for your $USER_INTERFACE, all your users immediately become advanced.

The second law is actually a special case of mahen23′s law, which I learned on #ubuntu-offtopic. Here it is:
If you create a button, people will press it.

Comments

4 Responses to “topyli’s law and topyli’s second law”

  1. gord on July 27th, 2010 23:25

    i am pressing the submit comment button right now!

  2. topyli on July 28th, 2010 00:20

    @gord, I’ve been thinking about removing that soon. Would make the user experience much easier!

  3. Tachyon Feathertail on July 28th, 2010 00:54

    I’d add the caveat that the reason your users become more advanced is because the ones who are intimidated by the interface — or know of $ANOTHER_PROGRAM that can do what they want without the “issues” — just leave.

  4. teadict on July 28th, 2010 01:33

    They become advanced AND forget the basics D:

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