Lucian Marin
Abuser experience
Abuser Experience (AX) is about people who abuse a product and, in return, expect it to do all kinds of things it was never designed or built to do. When you design a product, you should ask one question: is this feature for a nonuser, a user, or an abuser?
Take Adobe Photoshop. The latest versions of what was once a great product are a complete mess. 3D features in a product whose name starts with “photo”? Video features in a product whose name starts with “photo”? Animation features in a product whose name starts with “photo”? No wonder people are “shopping” elsewhere for tools with different purposes. Others are literally “photo-shopping” with Pictura inside Photoshop.
Take Microsoft Windows. Windows 95/98/98SE were a godsent gift to humanity. They struck the perfect balance of well-designed, integrated software experience. No kidding. Keep in mind that back then there was simply no competition for Microsoft products — designing a good product was even harder than it is today, when you can study what the competition is doing wrong. In the later versions, Microsoft tended to take the abusers’ input for granted, and they ended up with products that look and work like crap.
People can be split into three big categories, and all of them matter to a product’s success:
- Nonusers — the people you actually need: fans, enthusiasts, and so on.
- Users — the people you should really care about.
- Abusers — the people you should mostly ignore.
Abusers should be ignored because they come back to the product later and turn into some of its happiest customers. Abusers were the ones who asked Apple to add all kinds of features to the iPod line. Apple simply ignored their input, and in return the iPod became the most recognized product in the world — an icon in its own right.