Priority

Priority

I've been learining to play Europa Universalis IV, which is a cool game with a dizzying array of menus and levels ticking up and down. I'm starting to get the hang of it now, but the thing I've realised after a while as a newcomer is that the important thing isn’t knowing what everything does but knowing what can be ignored in 99% of cases. This is something I’ve noticed (but don't always remember) when training folk in software as well: when people are new to something with many options and settings, they have no idea what can be prioritised and deprioritised. Everything shouts at the same volume, and it’s your job to show what can be ignored and what can’t be. The longer you use something, the more comfortable you'll be with it, and then you'll be able to recognise patterns and expand the horizon on which you can predict its behaviour. You also get a much better idea of how to define what you want to be doing and how to achieve that. This is the thing that Apple (used to?) do very well: to a power-user, it looks like missing options and infantilising icons but for the newcomer it ensures they won't get overwhelmed by an abundance of buttons and sliders and a quick and easy way to see what kind of utility and outcome to expect from the program.

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