The Trouble With Use Cases
Ok, before I get too far ahead of myself here, let me say that use cases are incredibly helpful when designing for user experience. They help identify holes in UI and ensure that your design is helpful to your target audience and the way they will use your product.
The trouble with use cases is that they are often misused. And when they’re misused they lead to:
• A bloated and convoluted user interface
• Scope creep
• A confusing user experience
• Loss of vision
Add that all up and you get confused users…
Or worse yet, no users at all.
It’s easy to let use cases get in the way and not even realize that it’s happening. You can make a use case for just about anything. No, really… think about the last time you used a product and said to yourself, “this would be so much more helpful if it just did this one other thing…”
My goto example of this is Microsoft Word…
I’m sure many have seen this lovely picture of Word, with all (or nearly all) of the toolbars turned on.
While someone, somewhere, I’m sure finds many of these features useful, the rest of world really only needs a simple word processing tool.
And let’s be honest here, Wordart just needs to go. (amiright?)
This all happened because somebody suggested a new feature, or saw a use case that Word didn’t fulfill and decided to fill it. The result — a completely useless, bloated, and confusing UI.
Compare this to the simpler, and easier to use, Pages. Still has many of the same features that Word does — without all the addons. The use cases for both of these products should be almost identical… the difference is that the team who created Pages knew when to stop adding new features and going over new use cases.
Another example: Wordpress. Don’t get me wrong, Wordpress is great and it fills a need for many bloggers and small businesses. The trouble is, they’re no longer just another blogging platform. It has become much more of a CMS and “just blogging” has actually become quite the inconvenience.
However the new blogging platform Ghost’s goal is to do just one thing, and do it amazingly well: blogging. They did away with all the addons and extra features that could have come up. Instead they created something that is useful, intuitive, and fulfills the use cases for it’s intended audience while maintaining it’s purpose.
The point of this article is really just to say that…
Just because you can make a use case for a feature, doesn’t mean that the feature is useful.
