程序员守则：跟你比起来，大部分人都像笨蛋

我忘记这是从哪里转来的了，但是，这篇文章寓意深刻！这是一个程序最重要的东西，但是很多程序员或许没有意识做到这些。说的严重一些，他们忽略了用户，或许不是大意，更多的是程序员的自以为是。。。。

用户希望程序员在设计界面的时候将用户当成一个笨蛋（如果我是用户，我会这么期待！），悲哀的是界面设计者很多时候总以为用户比自己还聪明。这正是界面设计的聪明的自以为是。

以下是原文

在互联网业界，大多数人都知道Firefox和Explorer之间的区别。我们还知道FTW是什么意思，知道ASP，PHP和RoR之间的区别。或至少知道它们之间存在区别。

如果你遇到一个企业家，他从来没听说过Digg，Google Apps或Freemium模式，你也许会感到惊奇。是吗？

但也许只有我们会这样；只有我们这一小撮数码精英会花时间了解业内的几乎所有的最新动态和趋势，使自己的知识保持更新。地球上的其他人呢？大部分都 可以忽略不计，这样正好。但是，当你试图搞清楚你的客户想要的是什么的时候，问题就来了。经常会是这样，他们根本不能明白你在说什么。这有些例子：

 

1： 我父亲最近对我说他不知道如何回复一个人的短信。如果他拿的是一个很老式的手机，那也就没什么异议了，可他拿的是iPhone。这是个很难的问题吗？那 好，他启动了“短信”程序指给我看。他指着这个界面，有点恼怒，说“那个该死的回复按钮在哪？？”。我都被能傻了。iPhone的界面可以说是最优雅、最 简单易用的界面了。然而，上面却没有我父亲需要的一个一目了然的元素，一切都没有意义了：没有回复按钮意味着他不知道如何去回复。

2：几年之前，我在维护一个在线生日日历程序。界面非常的简单。它按月显示日期，在最上面有个大的红色按钮写着“添加生日“。按钮这么大，我认为人们不可能看不到它。不幸的是，他们真的看不到。在求助平台上我一天收到了100条求助信息，其中有60条第一句话是“我不知如何去添加一个生日“。起初我真是非常的不耐烦，这些愚昧的家伙宁愿费力发邮件给我，也不愿意多花两秒钟上下找一找。然而我之后做了一些实验，发现所有人都认为他们只需要在日历上点一下就可以添加生日。如果这么不灵，他们就会认为程序有问题。是我的错，不是他们。

3：在最近的一个招待会上，一个女士走过来告诉我，她的女儿也叫‘Loïs’。她说”我一直想遇到你，因为我发现你知道怎么把变音符号写到‘i’的 上面，你能告诉我怎么在iPhone里这么做吗？”我解释给她，第二天在公司午餐的时候，我把这个故事告诉了同事。我一边笑一边说“很显然，有些人仍然不 知道如何在iPhone了打出特殊字符！”。没人跟着我笑。然后有个人说“那个，我也不知道。你是怎么做到的？”然后另外一个人也承认也不知道，然后我发 现没有人知道。

4：Patrick不久前接到他爸爸的一个电话，他爸爸想在网上找点东西。Patrick告诉他一个网址，他爸爸看起来不太明白他在说些什么。于是 Patrick说“你不知道吗，这是一个网站的网址”。他爸爸仍然不能理解，于是Patrick说“就是你在浏览器地址栏里输入的那行字符”，之后他爸爸 答复道“我一点不知道你说的东西，我只是点击了一下上网的那个蓝色图标，Google就出来了，我输入了我想要的东西，然后就找到了”。很显然，你即使是 不知道每个网站都有一个唯一的网址，你也能在网上订票，查看邮件，以及所有网上的事情。

所有的这些故事的用意是什么？如果你能在iPhone或电脑上打出想 ü, é 或 © 这样的特殊字符，如果你会使用你的iPhone上的大部分的应用，你就是我们这一小撮专家中的一员。不要以你为标准，你是个例外。使你的应用程序，网站， 工具尽可能的简单，一定要找外人测一测。

那些人不是真正的笨，只是你比他们知道的多一些。不要让你的知识蒙蔽了自己。

[英文出处]：Compared to you, most people seem dumb Compared to you, most people seem dumb

Compared to you, most people seem dumb

In the Internet industry most people know the difference between Firefox and Explorer. We also know what FTW stands for and what the difference is between ASP, PHP and RoR. Or at least we know that there is a difference.

If you meet an entrepreneur who has never heard of Digg, Google Apps or TheFreemium Model you would be surprised. Right?

But that is just us; a small subset of digerati who have time to stay up-to-date on almost everything relating to our industry. The rest of the world? Ignorant to most of it, and that is just fine. The problem arrises when you are trying to think about what you customers could want. Chances are they don’t have a clue what you are talking about. A few examples:

1: my father recently told to me he didn’t know how to text someone back. He doesn’t have an old phone that doesn’t make sense but the iPhone. How hard could it be? Well, he opened up the “Messages” App and showed it to me. He gestured at the interface, slightly irritated, and said “Where is the damn reply button??”. I was stupefied. The iPhone interface is the most elegant and easy to understand interface out there. Still, it didn’t contain that one recognizable element that my father needed to make sense of it all: no reply button meant he didn’t know how to reply.

2: a few years ago I managed an online birthday calendar. The interface was really simple. It showed the calendar in month view with a big red button on top of it that said “Add a Birthday“. It was so big I figured people wouldn’t be able to miss it. Unfortunately they did. I got about 100 helpdesk messages a day and about 60 of those started with “I don’t know how to add a birthday“. At first I got really annoyed at those ignorant people who thought it was more convenient to just email someone than to think and look around for more than 2 seconds. But then I did some tests and found out that everybody assumed that they just had to click the calendar to add a birthday. If that didn’t work they assumed it was broken. My fault, not theirs.

3: at a reception recently a woman came up to me and told me her daughter is named ‘Loïs’ too. She said “I was hoping I would bump into you because I noticed you know how to put the umlaut on the ‘i’, Can you please tell me how to do that on the iPhone?”. I explained it to her and the next day in the office during lunch I told the story to my co-workers. I laughed and said “apparently some people still don’t know how to get to the special characters on the iPhone!”. Nobody laughed. Then someone said “Well, neither do I. How DO you do that?” and then someone else admitted not knowing and then it turned out nobody knew.

The point of all these stories? If you know how to get to the special characters like ü, é and © on your iPhone and or PC, if you know what a URL is and if you know how to use most of the Apps on your iPhone you and part of a small group of experts. Don’t assume you are the default because you are the exception. Make your apps, websites and tools as simple as possible and always test with other people.4: Patrick got a call from his father a while ago who wanted to find something on the web. Patrick told him the URL and his father didn’t seem to understand what he was talking about. So Patrick said “You know, the address of the website”. His father still didn’t seem to get it so Patrick said “the line of characters you enter in the location bar in your browser” after which his father replied “I don’t know about all that. I simply click the blue icon for Internet and then Google shows up and I type what I want  in Google and then I get it”. Apparently you can book tickets, check email and do all sorts of  stuff online without knowing that each website has a distinct address called a URL.

People are not really stupid, it is just that you know a lot more. Don’t let knowledge blind you.