this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2026
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Used to work IT for american municipalities. I can guarantee you that if a single sheet looked at all different, id get a call. They mindlessly press the same 4 buttons they know how to press and ignore everything else until it "breaks"
Used to work IT at a university during the transition time from Win 3.11 to Win95. The amount of emotional hand-holding (not even so much technical support) involved in getting the admin staff through the process was unbelievable to me at my young age. Now I understand, but back then I was expecting way more "this doesn't work" or "I can't find this program" and way less "I don't know how I'm going to do my job."
Cause the way UIs look when you want to do a job are discarded as "by programmers for programmers and not normal people", and UIs making an illusion of things working by themselves by intuition of the user and hiding specific actions are considered "user-friendly".
UIs intended for people to do their jobs look, as an extreme, like
ed. Less extreme - WordPerfect. XEphem, XGrace, Lisp environments. Those are what you come up with when you want a kiosk, but with a clear idea of a workplace supported by it, or an expert workplace where you do a job.While things like MSO, Telegram, today's web browsers, and so on - they are intended for people who don't want specifics. They want the illusion of fuzziness of what they are doing.