The Tech Gap

I've been helping some family members build a website for their small business, and the experience has been awful.

If they'd asked me to help a decade ago, I probably would have gotten frustrated with their inaptitude. Why can't you just follow the prompts? What do you mean you're not familiar with SEO? How can't you find the settings?

A few years in UX have flipped by thinking, though, and my frustration doesn't settle on them. We love to say that sites are designed (and written) for novices, but the starting point isn't always where you'd expect it.

I work in UX. I'm constantly thinking of flows and settings and edge cases, but the average person doesn't, and nor should they need to.

One of my parents tried to connect a domain but was dragged through an AI chatbot conversation, then asked to download side apps, while their actual goal was seemingly inaccessible. We also helped some grandparents set up video calling, and too many concepts blocked the path to setup. The app was trying to sell something, to be innovating, to shove features and extra perks in our faces before we got to the core of its offering.

Tech feels cluttered. Everything is AI, or features that will look good in a PM's portfolio, or designed for other tech workers. It feels like a separate entity from the real problems it's meant to solve.

Good content design can help with this, definitely; there are ways to highlight simple paths, use basic terms, and introduce new concepts. But until entire product teams reorient to focus on real people, the problem will keep cropping up.