UsabilityDesignPatterns/AskingMeQuestionsIDontCareAbout

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If your interface ever interrupts the user to ask them a question that they don't care about, then you have failed the user.

Of course, users care about different things. So we're really talking about "things 'most' users don't care about", which means you have to UsabilityDesignPatterns/KnowYourAudience.

Software often asks us questions we don't care about when we're setting it up for the first time. It asks us to choose between arcane options that we don't fully understand. These questions break our train of thought (see UsabilityDesignPatterns/MyTrainOfThoughtIsSacred) and they are usually full of UsabilityDesignPatterns/Jargonosity).

(If you think about it, the first run is probably the worst time to ask a user to choose options - they haven't had a chance yet to try out the software and figure out what it is that they want.)

The common response to these dialog boxes is to click whatever looks like a "Go Away" button without actually reading the screen. This is UsabilityDesignPattners/TeachingBadHabits because it teaches users to click through without reading, which is a habit that will get them into a lot of trouble someday.

In most cases, you should have picked a UsabilityDesignPatterns/SensibleDefault instead. Or perhaps used UsabilityDesignPatterns/AutomaticConfiguration. Then the users who don't care can just proceed with the default option or the automatic configuration. For the users who 'do' care, you can provide an interface for changing the default or overriding the automatic configuration. (If they care enough to know what non-default option they want, presumably they'll care enough to learn how to set the option.)

Finally, think hard about whether you need to provide an option 'at all'; beware the trap of UsabilityDesignPatterns/OverConfigurability.