Is the world losing our collective common sense? Many of us have heard, and chuckled at, the truism that common sense is really not that common right?
I'm certainly noticing public education campaigns to teach the obvious. Like this poster telling people to feed their children less because their stomachs are *gasp* smaller.
I've also recently seen ads (in Australia?) telling people not to litter. Really people? You need to be told that? Wtf?
The most extreme i have seen was in Singapore, where the government has to educate wealthy (and possibly educated?) citizens to treat their live-in maids like humans; including what to feed them.
What are the implications for the design of processes and software? How much more do we need to spell obvious things out?
Overdo it and we distract users with information. Not enough and users may fail to complete their tasks.
It is tempting to assume users know what we think of as the basics. What we think of as common knowledge may not be all that common.
And yes, I'm also familiar with: users don't read anything.
