Comment by estimator7292

Every engineer I've met who isn't a total dick will watch a user handle their product, cringe a lot and then go find ways to change the design to be more layperson-compatible.

When I design a UI, it's clearly a programmer's UI. But I try very hard to make things as clear as possible and I'm usually wrong. When I see people struggling to use a tool I made, it means I have failed at design and need to fix it.

It's my belief that if you grab a random person off the street and they can't figure out what your product is or how to do even the basics, you have failed to design your product. In 100% of cases, a user should be able to walk up and figure out the basics after a few minutes of poking.

If a user needs to check documentation before they can accomplish any task, your design is bad and you should feel bad. If a user needs to inspect every tooltip every time, ten million years dungeon.