Chapter 3: Beginners, Experts, and Intermediates

Most computer users know all too well that opening the shrink-wrap on a new software product augurs several days of frustration and disappointment spent learning the new interface. On the other hand, many experienced users of a program may find themselves continually frustrated because the program always treats them like rank beginners. It seems impossible to find the right balance between catering to the needs of the first-timer and the needs of the expert.

One of the eternal conundrums of interaction and interface design is deciding how to address the needs of both beginning users and expert users with a single interface. Some programmers and designers choose to abandon this idea completely, choosing instead to create software with a beginner mode and an expert mode, the former usually being an oversimplified and underpowered subset of the latter. Of course, nobody wants to be caught dead using software in beginner mode, but the leap from there to expert mode is usually off a rather tall cliff into a shark-infested moat of implementation-model design. What, then, is the answer? The solution to this predicament lies in a different understanding of the way users master new concepts and tasks.

Perpetual Intermediates

Most users are neither beginners nor experts; instead, they are intermediates.

The experience level of people performing an activity tends, like most population distributions, to follow the classic statistical bell curve. For any almost any activity requiring knowledge or skill, if we graph number of people against skill level, a relatively small number of beginners are on the left side, a few experts are on the right, and the majority—intermediate users—are in the center.

Statistics don't tell the whole story, however. The bell curve is a snapshot in time, and although most intermediates tend to stay in that category, the beginners do not remain beginners for very long. The difficulty of maintaining a high level of expertise also means that experts come and go rapidly, but beginners change even more rapidly. Both beginners and experts tend over time to gravitate towards intermediacy.

Although everybody spends some minimum time as a beginner, nobody remains in that state for long. People don't like to be incompetent; and beginners, by definition, are incompetent. Conversely, learning and improving is rewarding, so beginners become intermediates very quickly—or they drop out altogether. All skiers, for example, spend time as beginners, but those who find they don't rapidly progress beyond more-falling-than-skiing quickly abandon the sport. The rest soon move off of the bunny slopes onto the regular runs. Only a few ever make it onto the double-black diamond runs for experts.

AXIOM 

Nobody wants to remain a beginner.

The occupants of the beginner end of the curve will either migrate into the center bulge of intermediates, or they will drop off of the graph altogether and find some product or activity in which they can migrate into intermediacy. Most users thus remain in a perpetual state of adequacy striving for fluency, with their skills ebbing and flowing like the tides depending on how frequently they use the program. Larry Constantine first identified the importance of designing for intermediates, and in his book Software for Use (1999), he refers to such users as improving intermediates. The authors prefer the term perpetual intermediates, because although beginners quickly improve to become intermediates, they seldom go on to become experts.

A good ski resort has a gentle slope for learning and a few expert runs to really challenge the serious skier. But if the resort wants to stay in business, it will cater to the perpetual intermediate skier, without scaring off the beginner or insulting the expert. The beginner must find it easy to matriculate into the world of intermediacy, and the expert must not find his vertical runs obstructed by aids for bewildered perpetual intermediates.

A well-balanced user interface takes the same approach. It doesn't cater to the beginner or to the expert, but rather devotes the bulk of its efforts to satisfying the perpetual intermediate. At the same time, it avoids offending either of its smaller constituencies, recognizing that they are both vital.

Most users in this middle state would like to learn more about the program but usually don't have the time. Occasionally, the opportunity to do so will surface. Sometimes these intermediates use the product extensively for weeks at a time to complete a big project. During this time, they learn new things about the program. Their knowledge grows beyond its previous boundaries.

Sometimes, however, they do not use the program for months at a time and forget significant portions of what they knew. When they return to the program, they are not beginners, but they will need reminders to jog their memory back to its former state.

If a user finds himself not satisfactorily progressing beyond the beginner stage after only a few hours, he will often abandon the program altogether and find another to take its place. No one is willing to remain incompetent at a task for long.