This article is a bit misogynistic, but does a good job of showing how interfaces like Australis are actually terrible for average users. Though it is about web interfaces, it applies to any user interface.

We assume everyone knows what a save icon does. My mother used floppy disks for a few years but has undoubtedly forgotten all about their functionality. I see interface after interface that use only icons for actions such as “New document”, “Copy”, and “Delete”. Sometimes I’ll be walking her through some sort of interface over the phone and I’ll tell her to delete a file, only to realize that “Delete” is an icon. I’ll have to tell her at that point to search for some icon that looks like a trash can or an “X” or something. I’ve heard her say something genius after finding it like “Why doesn’t it just say ‘Delete’?”.

Icons are completely antagonistic to the thought process of the average user. (I wish there were a better term than “average user” or “regular user” because in my experience the “average” user is 80 or 90 percent of users.) They simply don’t understand what icons do, even after repeated use, and thus are afraid to click on them for fear of something unexpected occurring.

And when something unexpected does occur – like the old interface being nuked and replaced with cryptic one, à la Australis – regular users are paralyzed and then jump ship (how do you like them mixed metaphors?).

Understand that if you are redesigning a website that has loyal users, drastically changing an interface on them means they have to relearn all of the links and menus, and that will probably drive them away in frustration.

My partner’s mother did not know what the standard play/pause/stop buttons did in Winamp even after having seen them for at least forty years in other contexts. And guess what? This is completely normal. I am sure everyone reading this blog knows what they do. Not one regular user reads this blog, though. That, like the Mozilla devs, is a self-selection issue that leads to poor design.

That smart people are often only smart about the very, very tiny arena that they know something about should be explored more, in all areas. But that’s a much harder problem, I think.

It took me a bit, but I knew I recognized the beret flash and unit crest this guy is wearing.

It’s that of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, of the 82nd Airborne Division. But I knew it was a real paratrooper beret the moment I saw it; it’s folded correctly – which civilians never do, as no one ever tells them how to – and the unit crest and beret flash is correct, and it exhibits the proper wear berets get when they are worn daily and also put into pockets (as one does in the army).

Incidentally if you haven’t figured it out, the back colorful portion is called the “beret flash” and the front metallic portion is the “unit crest.”

I served in these units as a paratrooper:

Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 82nd Airborne Division

3rd Battalion of the 504th Infantry Regiment, 82nd ABN DIV (attached)

49th Public Affairs Detachment, 82nd ABN DIV (was attached to the 82nd at the time)

I went on quite a few training missions with the 505th PIR in the course of my army job. Funny to see relics from my past coincidentally out in the world, and out of context.

For comparison this is what my beret flash looked like:

And this is what my unit crest looked like (since we were the head unit, we got the full division’s unit insignia):