To geeks, it is a compelling attraction. Something cool and esoteric lives in there! All sorts of goodies to explore and configure.

To normal people, it is invisible. Normal people don't go pushing random icons on their apps because computers are fragile and may break if you do the wrong thing.

To me, it is a sign that product managers are a menace and must be stopped. A hundred thousand icons vying for your attention have been stuffed away because no one has the authority to prioritise user needs.

As a | user who has received some spam

I want to | easily report it as spam

So that | Google's AI can become ever stronger my inbox is easier to manage

How do you report spam? On the web, it is possible if you're prepared to enter the forbidden lair of ⋮. Click the one nearest the message and you'll see:

But there is no "report spam" button in the Gmail app. Try to find it. I promise you it isn't there.

No, not even behind the door of mysteries which is ⋮. See:

Ah ha! FOOLISH USER!! You thought that you could transfer a mastered skill from one environment to another? You are an idiot. A buffoon. The Eloi at Google mock your Morlock ways.

Here is the report spam button in the Gmail app - hidden in the top ⋮ menu!

And, just for completeness, here's what the top ⋮ on the web has.

Why?!

Why do the Monkey-Punchers at Google have such scorn for its users? Is it because their illegal monopoly means they don't have to compete for users? Do their perverse internal politics only reward employees for adding features, not removing them? Perhaps the web team and the app team are engaged in holy war around a doctrinal schism over icon placement?

We may never know.

OK, but why?

Why do the overflows on the web have icons but on the Android app they're barren?

Why is the order of the options completely different on both?

Why are the names different for the same functions?

We can only assume that the web team are Montagues and the app team Capulets.

What is going on?

Moving a UI from the big screen to the small screen is difficult. Some options aren't relevant in either context. Some labels are too big. Some prioritisation needs to happen. I accept that.

But users only have limited cognitive plasticity. They have a mental model of how a UI works and they expect it to be reasonably consistent.

I keep making the same mistake. Whether I'm on the web or app, I always go to the wrong option! This makes me feel like an idiot. I have a hundred apps to use, each with subtly different UIs - I can't be expected to keep them all straight. But I do expect the a common set of paradigms if the services are under the auspices of a single company.

Why are there two ⋮ menu options? I think the top relates to the conversation whereas the second relates to the specific message? But maybe I'm wrong.

Two out of three ain't bad

I lied earlier. There's a third way to report spam.

On the web, hover over one of the mysterious small icons - the ones with ridiculously thin lines and low contrast - and you'll be rewarded with this:

Make it make sense!!

This is a book about helping you discover if that idea you've had - for a product, feature, book, business, whatever - is likely to catch on. It does this through the lens of understanding users.

The Really Good Idea Test puts people at the heart of innovation, rather than the other way around.

Essentially, it's a series of worksheets - provided free - which help you get answers to the seven questions which make up the test. And all the questions are not ones you ask of yourself - but of your potential users. The whole attitude to the book can be summed up in one early paragraph:

I have seen innovators spend a lot of time diving into the feasibility, where the question is ‘Can we technically do it?’ and working on the viability, where the question is ‘Can it scale?’. The question they ought to be asking before getting too deeply into those is about desirability, which is the question of ‘Is there a user problem, need and/or desire?’. We must start here.

Yes! How many times have you (or your colleagues) started diving into building a solution before finding out if it actually solves a problem faced by your customers or users?

The book walks through several relatable examples. This is not a Silicon Valley book of daring and inspirational examples. Instead it is relentlessly practical. And, thus, avoids the survivorship bias most books choose by looking only at winners.

My only (mild) criticism is Julia's over-use of exclamation marks. But, having chatted with her several times, that is exactly how she talks! Absolutely 100% full of enthusiasm and joy. Frankly, more books need to be this accessible and friendly.

My former colleague Lou has written a marvellous book. It reminds me of the great “Simplicity” by Edward de Bono – it’s a series of short chapters, interspersed with large-print summaries.

I regard it as essential to anyone involved in service design. Or anyone on the periphery of services. It clearly and calmly explains why service design matters and how to make sure that it’s done right.

It is a slim volume, and better for it. Unlike some business books which attempt to spin a single anecdote into a full-length novel, this gives you everything you need to know in an efficient manner.

Which is a good metaphor for good services.

Most days I use DropBox. But it's just FTP, but a bit easier to use and automate.

I waste a lot of time on Slack. When I explain it to old-school nerds, I say it's IRC - but developed by someone who gives a damn about user experience.

Most people in the world don't have access to WWW. Instead, they use Facebook which gives them a much simpler way to post photos and share their thoughts. It doesn't ask them to hand-edit an .htaccess file.

I don't know anyone who uses Listserve. It turns out that Telegram is faster, more convenient, and doesn't require esoteric commands.

Indeed, why bother with Email? You don't need to learn how to configure SMTP when you have WhatsApp.

What other, classic, decentralised Internet tools have been turned from open protocols to closed and proprietary services?

A large part of this is our fault. And, by us, I mean gatekeeping nerds. We developed tools which were unforgiving. We had no interest in the "soft" skills of empathy. We were too socially-awkward to speak to real users. We were insular and we liked it! Worse than that - we revelled in it.

LOL! ROFL! LMAO!

And then Apple eats everyone's lunch by relentlessly focussing on being user friendly. Good for them. But it means handing over control to a single organisation.

I don't claim to be any good at user experience - far from it. But I despair at some of the redecentralised efforts I see springing up. They are technically brilliant, and follow the open-source philosophy of scratching one's own itch. And they all - without fail - are terrible to use.

Redecentralisation won't happen because of us nerds. It must happen despite us. Despite our ingenuity and despite our self-infatuation. It must be inclusive, and put user-needs at its very heart.

bləʊk ʧeɪn Noun: any technology which attracts clueless men

User Stories are great! A simplified snippet to help you understand the problem you're facing. There are, of course, a vanishingly small number of genuine use-cases for the Blockchain. So cryptobores have to resort to ever more baroque explanations to sell their wares.

I recently stumbled on this absolute gem of a user story, and feel compared to share it with you in all its horror.

*sigh*

I'll grudgingly admit, there's the kernel of a good idea in there. If you can look past the misogyny and self-loathing. And the outdated colloquialisms.

Perhaps I'm wrong. Should user-stories contain such fully-realised characters? Does it help you understand the full context of what you're designing if you have a picture in your mind of your hypothetical users' deepest psychosexual neuroses?

Maybe.

But - please - don't create user-stories which just reinforce your desire about how the world should work. Go out and speak to real users. Yes, even girls. Find out what they want, how your products can genuinely help them, and what threat models they face.

Users are real people - they aren't cyphers for your fantasies.

Shout out to Robin Wilton for coining the term in 2015 - albeit in a different context.

R Wilton https://freeradical.zone/@futureidentity

@futureidentity

Replying to @rsbarrington@rsbarrington @cpswan My next app will be a virtual currency add-on for Grindr. I’ll call it Blokechain.

---

This could be worse - they could be a lot more malicious and I could be in a more vulnerable position. I am positively festooned with privilege - so I don't have to worry about my physical safety, but it's annoying and distressing having to constantly filter them from my life. Other people aren't so lucky.

I thought I had successfully blocked them, until they started following me on Product Hunt:

For those of you who don't know, PH is a well-funded site which allows creators to show off their start-ups and other projects. It is, naturally, Silicon Valley in the extreme.

Somehow, they'd found me there. Annoying, but time to hit the block button. What's this? There isn't one.

It's 2017. We've had decades of trolls, harassers, killfiles, and mutes. This multi-million dollar business - which exists in a tech world steeped in misogyny, racism, and ugliness - doesn't see fit to give its users any controls over their own safety.

This is the conversation I had with their support team over the course of several day. All quotes are verbatim, but with the user's name removed.

• Me: "Someone I blocked on Twitter has started following me here. How can I block this user on ProductHunt? Doesn't make me feel safe."
• PH: "unfortunately we dont have a way to block users from following on Product Hunt yet"
• Me: "Please can you remove the user X from following me. I have blocked them on Twitter but there's no way to do that on Product Hunt."
• PH: "Our site is synced with either FB or Twitter. If X is blocked on those, they will be blocked on PH as well."
• Me: "Then there is a bug on your code. I have blocked X on Twitter. I do not want X in my life and their presence in my followers list is distressing me. Please remove them from my followers."
• PH: "Ok, I talked with the team and we don’t have blocking functionality right now unfortunately."
• Me: "Are you seriously telling me that you don't have the ability to change a single row in your database? I find the user's presence on my list disturbing. I appreciate that your company is small and not well funded. I know that harassment is a minor problem in the tech industry and therefore it is unusual to have to worry about user safety. I am not asking you to ban this user. I am BEGGING you to stop them from following me."
• PH: "We removed them from following you. Sorry for the inconvenience. That's a bummer."

"That's a bummer." Gosh yes, that's the only hecking way I'd describe this situation. What a bummer, dude.

FFS. You wouldn't launch a product without understanding usability, would you? Or launch a product without considering security and accessibility.
It's 2017 - you cannot launch a social product without thinking about user safety.

I'm lucky. I don't have a violent ex stalking me, or a rabid "fan", or a menacing former employer.

What I do have is a platform to call out Product Hunt. Not cool, guys. Not cool.

As a first-time user, I want to log in with Facebook, so that I don't have to set up a new account.

Fairly easy, right? Stick enough of those up on a wall and you've got yourself a party!

If you've ever played an RPG or Roguelike game, you'll be familiar with how your character can evolve throughout a game.

You put on a cursed ring! Your attacks now do 10% less damage!

(A typical debuff)

So, let's apply a little video-game learning to our user centred design.

I've written previously about drunken user testing - being sloshed is a temporary physiological and neurological impairment. One that may affect the majority of your users. I remember trying to order a Chinese takeaway using an app while inebriated - it didn't end well!

Now, you wouldn't necessarily rewrite all your stories with "As a ^drunk user, I..." but it is certainly worth scribbling out a few stickers which you can overlay on existing stories. How do you change your design and your code if you assume the user is a lush?

There's a serious point here (somewhere). Minority users often have exactly the same desires as majority users - but they may need a different way to achieve them.

For example, a blind user will almost certainly want to use the full functionality of your site. Is it enough to just have one user story saying:

As a blind user, I want the site to comply with accessibility best practices, so that I can use it effectively.

I don't think so. I mean, it is better than nothing, but almost every story should be tested against a variety of variables.

Of course, just as in video games, sometimes our users receive a little boost - an Enchantment - which makes them better able to perform some tasks. How should we cope with users who are better than we are at using our system?

Finally, Equipment. Some of you are reading this blog post using an extremely expensive, high powered computer, with a massive screen and jiggaflops of RAM - others are having bytes transmitted via carrier-pigeon and carved into a potato.

I've quickly jotted down some typical amendments which can be applied to most user stories.

(Feel free to argue about exactly where each of those item should go - you get the general idea.)

If you're playing a game and are armed with only a cursed wooden spoon and flammable armour, it is unlikely you'll beat the dungeon's dragon boss. Similarly, a tired user with Parkinson's and an old BlackBerry running on 2G, may find using our service difficult.

Think about what attributes you can add to your user stories. Randomly sprinkle them through your design process. Help developers and designers understand that there's no such thing as a typical user.

Addendum

This discussion was sparked off at a design day. A very lovely agency had written out some lovely user profiles for us. You know the sort "Dave, 35, busy juggling 3 kids and love of golf" and "Denise, 22, wants to keep up with technology" that kind of thing.

They seemed rather put out when I started adding my own notes to them. Little speech bubbles saying:

• I am secretly gay.
• I am drowning in debt.
• I am a victim of domestic violence.
• I am wanted by the police.
• I am embezzling money.
• I am getting a divorce.
• I am a social media troll.
• I have PTSD.

Not things which normally go on to a persona - but real problems which affect a lot of our users. We can't assume everyone who interacts with our stuff is happy, healthy, and honest.

Some of our personas should reflect the ugly reality of humanity:

As a racist, I want to be able to send offensive messages, so that I can assert my dominance.

How do we cater for these stories? I don't mean "how do we make a racist social network?" but rather "how do we minimise the harm from or to this sort of user?"

I'm not trying to criticise User Stories - I'm saying that we should consider that a typical user gets tired, has low battery, may want to hide an aspect of themselves, needs some protecting, and often changes throughout the course of the day.

So, Product Owners, it is time to level up! Or, as I prefer to say, +1 to inclusiveness.