Chapter 10: Eliminating Excise

Software that charges its users a tax, or excise, of cognitive and sometimes even physical effort every time it is used.

Excise is any task that doesn't advance the user directly towards their goal. Stopping at red lights is something imposed on us by our society that doesn't help us achieve our true goal.

Eliminating excise makes the user more effective.

Dragging, reshaping, resizing, reordering, tiling, and cascading windows qualify as excise actions.

We must be careful when we eliminate excise. We must not remove it just to suit power users. Similarly, however, we must not force power users to pay the full price of our providing help to new or infrequent users - i.e. training wheels - Don't weld on training wheels.

"Pure" excise - no one needs them; a hindrance to all users.

Transcient posture applications, which aren't used frequently, can tolerate more excise. Sovereign applications may be used everyday and excise will become agonizing.

Flashy (animated gifs for example) can be excise (Boo.com was an example)

Chapter 9: Flow, where a user enters a highly productive mental state by working in harmony with his tools. Interrupting a user's flow for no good reason is stopping the proceedings with idiocy and is one of the most disruptive forms of excise.

Errors, notifiers, and confirmation messages are excise. Asking permission is excise. Allow for input whenever you have output.

The existence of excise is in user interfaces is, along with navigational issues, the primary cause for user dissatisfaction.