The instructor’s laser pointer is trembling slightly against the white expanse of the projector screen. We are on slide 97. There are 202 slides left to go before we are deemed ‘proficient.’ I am sitting in a swivel chair that squeaks every time I breathe, surrounded by 19 colleagues who have all reached a collective state of catatonic acceptance. The button on the screen is labeled ‘Execute Batch Process.’ To use it, we are told, we must first navigate to the ‘Admin’ tab, then the ‘Sub-ledger’ dropdown, then hold the Shift key while clicking ‘Recalculate.’ If you forget the Shift key, the system freezes for 29 minutes.
I catch myself staring at the dust motes dancing in the projector’s beam. Earlier this morning, I waved back at a stranger on the street who was actually waving at the person standing nine feet behind me. It was a classic human error-a misinterpretation of signals. But in this room, we aren’t talking about human error. We are talking about a systemic demand for humans to act like machines because the machines were built without humans in mind. We call this ‘training.’ In reality, it is a ransom negotiation for our own productivity.
Case Study: Friction vs. Dignity
Ava Z., an elder care advocate I’ve known for years, recently told me about the software her agency adopted. It was designed to ‘streamline’ patient records. Instead, it required a 9-day onboarding process. Ava, who has navigated the complexities of Medicare and end-of-life logistics for 39 years, was reduced to tears by a dialogue box that wouldn’t let her save a note because she hadn’t filled out a non-mandatory field that the system treated as mandatory.
Ava’s job is to provide dignity to the aging; the software’s job, apparently, was to provide friction to Ava.
Building Labyrinths, Charging for Maps
When we tell an employee they need a three-day retreat to learn how to use a tool that is supposedly there to help them, we are admitting a profound failure of architecture. We have built a labyrinth and are now charging people for the map. We blame the user for not being ‘tech-savvy’ or for ‘resisting change,’ when the truth is that the change we are asking them to embrace is fundamentally irrational.
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Complexity is a debt that the creator incurs and the user pays.
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Consider the ‘Execute Batch Process’ button again. Why does it need a secret handshake? Why is the nomenclature so detached from the actual human outcome? If the goal is to pay a set of invoices, the button should probably say ‘Pay Invoices.’ But we’ve lived with legacy systems for so long that we’ve developed a Stockholm syndrome toward bad UI. We think that if a system is powerful, it must be difficult. We equate ‘enterprise-grade’ with ‘user-hostile.’
The $9,999 Hidden Cost
This is where the $9,999 hidden cost comes in. You pay for the license, sure. But then you pay for the lost hours. You pay for the 49 support tickets filed in the first week. You pay for the morale of people like Ava Z., who start to feel incompetent because they can’t figure out a workflow that was never meant to be figured out-only memorized. It is a design problem masquerading as a learning gap. We don’t have a training problem; we have a failure of empathy at the engineering level.
Cost Breakdown (Hypothetical Metrics)
Reading vs. Seeing
I once spent 19 minutes trying to explain to a developer why a ‘Submit’ button shouldn’t be the same color as the ‘Cancel’ button. He looked at me with genuine confusion and said, ‘But they’re labeled.’ He wasn’t wrong, technically. But he was ignoring the way the human brain processes visual hierarchy. We don’t read first; we see first. When we force users to read every single label just to avoid a catastrophic error, we are draining their cognitive battery before they’ve even started their real work.
The Language of Interface
Required Memorization
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Intuitive Language
This friction is exactly what modern platforms are trying to erase. In the world of freight factoring, for instance, the difference between a legacy clunker and a tool like invoice factoring software is measured in the blood pressure of the people using it every day. When the design is intuitive, the ‘training’ becomes a walkthrough, not a marathon. You don’t need slide 97 when the interface speaks the same language as the task. You don’t need a 300-page manual when the system anticipates the next logical step.
The Power User Paradox
We have this weird cultural obsession with ‘power users.’ We think a power user is someone who has mastered the arcane shortcuts and hidden menus of a difficult program. But a truly powerful user is someone who can achieve their goals so fluidly that the tool disappears. If I have to think about the hammer, I’m not thinking about the nail. And if I’m not thinking about the nail, I’m definitely not thinking about the house I’m trying to build.
Ava Z. eventually gave up on that agency’s software. She went back to a combination of Excel and paper because, as she put it, ‘The paper doesn’t make me feel stupid.’
– Haunting Sentiment
That is a haunting sentence. Imagine spending $149,000 on a digital transformation only to have your most experienced staff go back to legal pads because your design was too ‘sophisticated’ for them to use.
The Power of ‘No’
It’s not just about the buttons, though. It’s about the philosophy of the ‘Default.’ Most software is built with 89 different settings that nobody ever touches, yet they clutter the primary workspace. We are terrified of leaving things out, so we put everything in, creating a stickpit that requires a pilot’s license for someone who just wanted to drive to the grocery store. We’ve forgotten how to edit. We’ve forgotten that ‘No’ is a design tool.
The Guardrail Philosophy
I think back to my awkward wave this morning. I felt foolish for a second, but then I moved on. In software, when a user ‘waves’ at the wrong button, the consequences are often permanent. They lose data. They delay a shipment. They miss a deadline. And then we send them to more training. We tell them to ‘pay more attention.’ We never stop to ask why the system let them make that mistake in the first place. A well-designed system should be a guardrail, not a trapdoor.
GUARDRAIL, NOT TRAPDOOR
We are currently witnessing a shift. The next generation of workers, those who grew up with interfaces that respond to their intuition, will not sit through 299 slides. They will simply quit. They see ‘clunky’ not as a sign of power, but as a sign of obsolescence. They understand that their time is the most expensive variable in the equation. For a business, clinging to a ‘training-heavy’ system is a form of technical debt that eventually bankrupts the culture.
Protecting the User
I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my career-Lord knows I’ve clicked the ‘Delete All’ button when I meant to click ‘Save As’ more than 19 times. But those mistakes taught me that the best software doesn’t just enable my work; it protects me from my own humanity. It understands that I’m tired, that I’m distracted, and that I probably didn’t read the documentation.
As the projector finally hums to a stop and the lights flicker back on in the training room, the instructor asks if there are any questions. The room is silent. Not because we understand, but because we are too exhausted to care.
We have been ‘trained.’ We have been reshaped to fit the jagged edges of a machine. And as I walk out, I wonder how much better our work could be if the machines were finally reshaped to fit us. Why are we still accepting ‘hard to use’ as a professional standard? Is it because we think struggle equals value?
Stop Rewarding Complexity
We need to stop rewarding the complexity and start demanding the obvious. Because at the end of the day, Ava Z. shouldn’t have to be a computer scientist to be a caregiver. And you shouldn’t have to be a martyr to your software just to get through your Monday.
