Mithat's Maxims

• Universality begets complexity.
• Complexity scales exponentially with the number of added features.
• Optimize the right thing(s).

• You are not the typical user.
• The easier you make it for someone to do something, the more likely they are to do it.
• Users don’t read.
• If in doubt, do the default.
• If in doubt, make a mistake.
• Users develop models, except they don't. They develop habits.
• No one will solve a problem when they know a workaround.

• What, not how.

Not actually maxims, but rather some trends that can get you into trouble.

• Make corner cases no more difficult than typical cases, even if it makes the typical cases cumbersome. (See “Universality begets complexity,” and “Optimize the right thing(s)”.)

• Minimum plausible affordances.

• For every opinion, there is an equal and opposite opinion.
• An opinion in motion will remain unchanged even when acted on by an external force.
• The acceleration of an opinion depends on the outrageousness of the opinion times the number of times the opinion is seen.