Hmm ... Better pigeon hole clients into only using the teabag.

"Why can't I put the label in the water?!"

Smart developer: let's make the label an 8 inch square so it won't fit in any mug.

I design optics and I've seen a return request because they "couldn't see the target" and included photos to show what they meant. The customer installed it backwards and didn't bother trying the other way.

And that's how an iPhone with an interface that even a toddler can figure out sold a few billion units.

A proper engineer would make the tag absorbent and use the principle of capillarity to transfer the water to the bag (and the other way round once tea flavoured) to cover this case.

Users can't avoid being stupid, but a proper engineer should be able to cover all cases.

Idiot proofing just results in a better class of idiot.

I can be an idiot every once and a blue moon. Thank you to anyone who put literally everything a manual just in case someone is braindead and isn't afraid to rtfm.

To be honest it's just after I've spent 10 hours on something fairly complicated and new to me. I suddenly can't think for myself anymore. It literally becomes a chore to do the simplest shit sometimes.

If you have access to any kind of UX and UI folks, you automagicallly get a leg up on this, y'all. It is goddamn amazing.

Single dev on a personal project? Go find someone in the community who has an eye for design or hit up a design forum. Work has you on a project with only two other devs and limited resources? Ask for a favor from the UX team down the hall.

We are all tryna make good experiences out here. Let us avoid getting 'teabagged.'

Send multiple all user emails stating which end to put in the water. People still call the Help Desk or email you directly, your response is forwarding them the email, they complained that it's not convenient or they get too many emails or don't have time for emails.

You send documentation and place it on the portal. they complain it's overly complicated, so you add screenshots with which end to put in the water. They still mess it up and complain about lack of instruction.

You schedule 30 minute courses, 3 times a day, every day of the week and spam out notifications to sign up. You get a total of 12 people the first 2 weeks, most of which figured it out on their own at some point but thought it was mandatory, or that there were high level secrets or Tips n Tricks you were gonna teach. When the education period ends, you still get people complaining that the times weren't convenient enough for them because they work 2nd shift or weekends.

You schedule another 2 weeks of classes, after hours and on weekends. 2 people show up, but not the ones who bitched about it.

Despite everything, your boss still sings you on your review didn't meet the needs of the organization with this rollout

Documentation be like:

For (literal string) place for i = T end of and rest unit 4

Speaking as a user (I'm not a programmer even if I'm often loafing around here):

Left is not "optimistic" but "assumptive" - blame the dev and the user.
Right is not "pessimistic" but "diligent" - blame the user.

But the worst type doesn't appear in this pic: they'd put a ball of chicken wire around the label so it's physically impossible to put it in the hot water.

if ( parameters.teaMass <= TEA_BAG_WEIGHT ) { 
    return "Error: incorrect input. Check if tea bag was inserted correctly into water container."
 }

I write graphics software that almost seems intuitive, until you realize I gave it a split personality.

Even I forget about the split personality side of it.

I'd* better write some documentation

I don't even work in IT but I make complex Excel tools for my Finance team.

I get an email about once every week or two from one of my coworkers asking what to do about an issue. Nearly every single issue would have been resolved if they just read even the first few instructions.

My favorite is a specific tool we use to review the financials. It relies on Scripting.Dictionary which is only present in .NET 3.5.1 or prior. The very first instruction on the file says you need to download it. There's even a very handy button right there which will take you to our software center to install it.

Yet every single time someone gets a new laptop, they immediately assume that the file is broken.

You're calling this person stupid, but they're 90% of the way to getting it right.

If only every technical problem was this easy to solve.