User-unfriendliness could be a thing.

It’s just like any other moment after hiking. Exhausted and paralyzed, I was still hoping to squeeze some pleasure out of looking at all the pictures I took from the trip. My friends were also waiting for those at their home. Clock was ticking as their patience faded.

One more step. Upload them to Dropbox. This was when I received a notification, saying “Upload stopped. Your Dropbox is too full”.

Not “somewhat full”, not “a little full”, it’s “too full”. Guess someone has been squandering storage space. I felt like it is mocking that someone, who happened to be me and caused a tiny bit of humiliation, along with my frustration. Ughhhhhhhhh…

Can’t you just say “Oops, it seems like you run out of space. Want more?”

Today at work, I was using a web scaffolding tool called Yeoman. In one of the most boring interfaces, the terminal, it gave me notification of installing in the following picture:

Even though we just met, Yeoman and I are friends already. Friends help each other get better. Friends say bye to each other. And show you cute doodles.

And this, is called user-friendly.

Two folks from Palantir gave a tech talk on humanizing data earlier in my company. One of the interesting points that they mentioned is make data human-readable. One of them gave the example of “Hopper”, an app that helps you find cheap flights. One of the notification it gives you about booking a flight is this:

As you can see, it is trying to give user the most human-readable message possible.

The movie Her describes the relationship between a man and a smart operating system “Samantha”. She is sensitive, playful and lovely, the most user-friendly technology you have ever seen. So friendly that makes the user fall in love. The effortless interaction between user and the system sheds light on the future, a future which humanizes everything.

Maybe to one point, one of the reasons that people have fewer human friends will be softwares are also becoming our friends. But it is way better for us to cry for help after feeling being bullied by an unfriendly software:

Hey, your space is too full to upload this hiking picture, so shame on you!