I refer to the Help menu option that lives at the top of almost every application. In my experience people never use Help, nor do they use the internet to find the solution to their problem. This means we get a lot of phone calls and e-mails from customers. We act as a verbal reference manual. The consequence of this is that customers don’t learn either. Much of their day to day work is simply replicating what they’ve done previously, without attaining any knowledge of why they are performing specific actions, or how specific actions complement the rest of the things they do.

But software manufacturers don’t make it easy for people to get to achieve their goals. Take this example from Windows Vista: suppose you want to change the resolution of your display. This is what you have to do:

1. Click the Start button
2. Click Control Panel
3. Click Appearance and Personalization
4. Click Personalization
5. Click Display Settings
6. Find the section labelled Resolution
7. Move the slider to the resolution you want
8. Click Apply

This is what you have to do on a Mac:

1. Click the Apple logo in the menu bar
2. Click System Preferences
3. Click Displays
4. Click on the resolution you want
5. Close the window

Note: moving a slider to change resolution is just plain wrong. On earlier versions of Windows – and it might be the case with Vista too – you don’t know what resolutions you can choose from until you start moving the slider. Furthermore, resolution is not a linear relationship.

All of this reminds me of the days prior to Mac OS X. It’s predecessor operating system for Macs came with on-screen guides that steered the user interactively through common operations. Not by just showing a series of screenshots, but by actually doing the work for the user, highlighting the various steps to take. This was far superior to anything around today.