Post
🔥 New blog post!
Covering, among other things:
- Why making simple things easy and complex things possible is not enough
- How to maximize your UI’s signal-to-noise ratio
- Why you can’t uncover friction through user feedback
- How to prioritize user needs
https://lea.verou.me/blog/2025/user-effort/
I have rewritten this post at least 10 times in the past year, so I’m almost in disbelief that I finally managed to hit Publish. 🫣
Hope it resonates!
Gah, I was so happy I finally finished it that I forgot to test in Safari like a newb. Turns out none of the SVGs work there plus a bunch of other layout issues. 😭
If you’re on Safari, check back tomorrow when I’ll have fixed them or replaced them!
Edit: ok, at least the animation is fixed (replaced with a gif in Safari). Turns out Safari doesn’t support the d CSS property. Thanks to my apprentice @dmitrysharabin for catching this!
Edit 2: ok, most issues should be fixed now!
@leaverou I’ve been in that boat so many times. The captain and the crew treat me like a family member.
@leaverou The user interface of your blog is far from ideal. Given that reading it is probably an important use case for it…
@fubaroque whoa, never seen that before. Thanks for reporting!
@leaverou
the red 👎 curve on that complexity-to-effort chart reminds me a bit of learning to use vi/vim 😆
@gumnos since when does vim make simple things easy?? 😅
vim…making simple things complex and making nigh-impossible things possible 😉
@gumnos heh 😅
So not quite the red curve (which has a point at the top left, ie does make simple things easy), more like a near horizontal line fairly high up, kinda like the SVG DOM
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