Common Sense: "Something is usable if it behaves exactly as expected"

Steve comments on and points to an article by Joel Spolsky.

In summary “Something is usable if it behaves exactly as expected”

It links to my pieces on Intuitive Software and Common Sense.  You’ll also notice that this issue appears in my post on Outlook and Notes and specifically why people struggle with the Notes client.

Notes definitely does not fit into the category of software that “behave exactly as expected” – when I double-click an attachment I want it to “Open” as an example (but apparently that’s fixed in the latest version).

But don’t get me wrong Notes is only one of many pieces of software that don’t work how I expect them to.

Why do people only use 10% of the capabilities of a piece of software – because it’s because they can’t find the other 90% .