Let me share a story. In my early years, I have practically gained the title of The Astronaut in my greater family for that I received a Commodore +4 computer in the 80’s, and members of the family paid visits to see the magic of the little me pressing keys on the keyboard, and they wondered hey, how the hell do you know which key to press? For some, I revealed the secret answering there is a letter or a digit on each, for the others, I kept the secret hidden deep. I confess, I’m not free of the original sin.
In the recent years, my Mom, became retired by that time, began to develop a friendship with computers. This friendship progresses moderately, to say so, and sometimes I feel we make a few steps backwards, but who cares, slow and steady wins the race. Lately she decided to fulfil my request and planned to scan a few old photos. When she finished with the first, she sent it to me in an email. Well, I’m used to receive scanned documents turned upside down, and chances are some family members still think The Astronaut can read upside down, and I keep the secret of the Rotate Image command in an effort to prove I still owe this title for a good reason. Then I realized the photo was only a few kilobytes in size so I decided to ask her to make a TeamViewer session and let me change the scanner’s resolution to a higher value. I explained, the scanned images will be greater in details and we can even print them, what made her interested in this adventure.
Responding to her question, I also explained the scanner software certainly has so-called profiles, groups of scanning settings, each of which tailored to different types of scanned materials like documents and photos. It seemed logical to her, for what I was happy!
So, we opened the scanner software, I discovered its “Scan profiles” option, opened it, and a window appeared with… with a dozen of profiles called Document and another dozen called Photo. With absolutely no differences in the settings. And I clearly heard the sudden deep silence over the line, and in my head as well: Why? Why 2 x 12 profiles? How to choose the correct one? Won’t I be lost here? What if I select the wrong one? Are they really, I mean really, the same? For sure?
Uncontrolled cytokinezis of in-app assets.
Poorly designed interface (1), the first, most accented column contains garbage (for the most users having only one scanner or printer).
Poorly designed interface (2), the most accented column has insufficient width—the actual scanner model was DX4400, which you can not see in the list until you make it wider, but tell me a novice user being capable of changing column widths or at least thinking of such an option.