So lately I have been trying to mockup some ideas for a new part of the admin section of a project I’m working on. As a designer, part of your job is to create an easy to understand user experience. I spent a lot of time thinking of new ways to solve problems we had throughout the site. One of these problems was tags.

There could be thousands of available tags. But the solution thought up by the developers was to have a checkbox next to each keyword. Which would have been okay if there weren’t going to be a lot of keywords. So I devised a solution which combined two elements. A drop down select box, and a input box. They could find a existing keyword, or create their own. I thought the drop down was even too much, but it was insisted upon.

Now before I could even get feedback from the client, I was told time and time again: “The users are too stupid to understand that” Now let’s stop here for a moment. Yes, users need instruction, but they aren’t stupid. This is why innovative ideas get shot down. It’s the companies that are willing to make mistakes that will make something great.

Continuing. So due to a lack of time to change anything, my mockup was shown to the client. Turns out, they loved it! They where playing with the new features, and other UI ideas I had, and they enjoyed using it. Now this is just one example of one part of this mockup, I could go on for a few more, but I’ll leave it at this.

Users are not dumb, it’s up to the designer to make it clear what it is the user should be doing. If you notice users are struggling with your design, then you probably have to rethink it.