Progressive Reduction
The more you use a product, the more familiar you become with it, the less you need from its interface. At first an iPod could seem super unintuitive - how do you even turn this thing on? But as you become more familiar with its interface, the reduced design starts to work. In the same way you would imagine three steps of progressive and reduced versions of your design. One for first time users, one for advanced users and another for the experts.
When talking about digital software especially, you can work with these three levels of reductions progressively, which I think is very exciting.
- Crawl (explicitly explain what to do)
- Walk (explain what to do)
- Run (just do it)
The interface should adapt to the user’s level of skill.
- Click here to do something (instructions and a button)
- Icon (icon working as a button)
- Do it by default, if possible