Bear in mind: In most cases the usability principles championed by Don’t Make Me Think are ideal for creating an effective user experience. It is up to us, as experts, to identify those rare features and cases that require a different approach.

I’ll explain this by demonstrating three principles, using research I conducted for a real project. Our user personas for this demonstration include Adam the system administrator, an expert user of a critical application with all the relevant permissions, and Jane, his manager.

Make me comprehend

The conventional rule of thumb: Decrease visual load. Make an interface as clean and simple as possible.

But there are cases in which we need to add text, visual elements, and functional elements to make functionality clearer and more easily understood.

For example, imagine a super-sensitive feature in a critical application that’s rarely used by Adam, the system administrator. The purpose of this feature is to edit system rule settings, each of which govern specific operational aspects of the system across the board.

My study showed that an administrator who rarely operates this feature (once a year on average) is unlikely to remember what each and every rule means or controls.

Increasing the UX friction aims to empower users’ sense of safety and control.

To remedy this lapse in memory of critical details, we incorporated inline help texts describing each rule in the feature’s main view where all the rules are presented. Furthermore, when a user drills down to the details view of each rule, a longer inline explanation appears followed by a link to the full online help documentation.

When it comes to rarely used critical operations, incorporate some inline help text — even at the cost of increasing the visual load.