I was reading an interesting post by Craig Fitzpatrick and felt I ought to put in my two-pennies-worth.

I totally agree with his statement:

It’s the experience level of the user. And that changes over time. Newbie users LOVE simple products because they’re not intimidating. They’re easy to get started.

But although I would like to agree with the following, I am not sure how you would actually get there:

Personally, I believe the best solution is to stop trying to design a single user experience that is exactly the same for the beginner user as for the advanced user. Once again, in trying to please everyone, you risk pleasing no-one

The following points are true in my experience:

• Designing a ‘modal’ interface does not work. Take the Expanding Menus in Office (one of the most truly awful ideas in my opinion and gives nothing but some other new ‘widget’ to be confused over).
• Everyone thinks they are above their personal capability with most people thinking they are intermediate to advanced when in reality they are beginners
• No-one likes to think they are stupid or dumb and will not admit a lack of knowledge
• Customers, given the choice, due to the above points would select a modal interface beyond their knowledge

So what have you gained, you have a technically more complex product that is not going to be used in its simple mode by the people you would expect to use it.

Selling different products that are geared to different users is the correct way to do it, beginner users would have a more graphical wizardy type interface, whereas advanced users would have standard menus loaded with commands.

But this comes with some pretty major problems:

• How do you upgrade a customer from one product to another
• How do you explain to an existing or potential customer that the feature they really need is in the next product up … which may be more expensive, or more complicated just for that one feature
• What if a customer didnt think your product did something and didnt bother buying it based on that … but it did do it but in a different version than he is using
• Will they actually download 3 different versions to see which one is for them … unless its an obvious product for an already saturated market like e-mail or blog readers then they might not know what features on the feature list they need

But in my experience the last two points are major ones; you will lose customers trying out your products as they dont realise that the feature they are looking for is in a different version. And they won’t download and try 3 different versions to decide which one is for them.

So what to do … there is no easy solution other than what you think your product and market can stand.

Do you remember Flooz? It sold dollars that could be exchanged for gifts. Whoopi Goldberg stumped for it and Flooz survived the implosion of 2000. Then in 2001, one of its biggest customers, Cisco Systems, wanted to renegotiate a multimillion-dollar contract. Flooz survived that as well.

Then the company noticed that gift buying didn’t slow down after the Mother’s Day/Father’s Day/graduation season. The FBI informed Robert Levitan (CEO who also started iVillage.com) that the Russian mobsters were buying Flooz credit as a way to launder stolen credit card purchases. Flooz survived that, too. Then the large credit card companies decided to withhold payments, in part, says Levitan, because Flooz was able to garner a higher percentage of each transaction than they were.

The company was forced to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection. It had 325,000 creditors, the largest number of creditors ever. The court allowed it to notify creditors via e-mail, a first. Levitan expected to face a hostile audience of several angry consumers at the first court hearing.

“No one showed up,” he said. The company called it quits on Sept. 10. On his first day of unemployment in years, Levitan decided to go to his Manhattan gym, where he saw the disaster of Sept. 11, 2001, unfold.