Designed for Use

People Don’t Want to Read

This might sound strange coming after a section about the importance of text, but the hard truth is this: most people avoid reading whenever possible.

Merely by reading this book, you have proven that you are quite unlike most of your users. In 1987 in “Paradox of the Active User,”^[15] John M. Carroll and Mary Beth Rosson pointed out that “learners at every level of experience try to avoid reading.” Not much has changed in the last two decades. In fact, it may be getting worse: a 2007 study by the National Endowment for the Arts^[16] concluded that Americans are not just reading less than they used to, but they are also reading less well.

You have probably been on the receiving end of a “my printer has stopped working” ...