Building things following some of those principles Tog lists:
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if it’s undo-able, make it obviously undo-able. People feel safer trying something on an unfamiliar interface if they don’t have to worry that it’ll do something permanent.
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let people go back to wherever they were before they got here, and make it obvious
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if an action is very much not undo-able, make it real clear and obvious (submit on a form sends data to a DB for example) and if it’s “weird”, friendly explanation text is nice.
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Tell people why you’re doing what you’re doing: when we asked for people’s telephone numbers on a form, we told them why (how it mattered to their insurance policies, and that they could mention some other method in the comments textarea instead)
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test all your stuff on 5 year olds. Then test them on non-technical old people. Then test on some immigrant neighbours. If they all grok it, you rock.
Those bits I know at least, and those sorts of things all help me when I’m in some unfamiliar area. Dropbox I recall (the website) had a lot of “oh, you’re new here? Well this is this and that is that” stuff that helped me just Do Stuff right away without much fear.