Realising more and more how this is related to my ADD.
Forms are just hell for me. The things I have to sign at every new doctor or dentist, government agency forms, residency, new ID, sign the kid up for an activity, …
I end up asking myself: “What do they want to hear?”
This year at a new dentist, first appointment, they wouldn’t let me see him before I finished the forms, and when I had them done, he didn’t have time for me anymore. I got in early! There was also a misunderstanding of whether I say when I’m done or they call me in.
A really odd exception are tax forms. I have a business and do my own taxes, but the forms make perfect sense to me. Of course I know the answers to: How much money did I take, how much of that was VAT, what were my expenses and in what category, what percentage did a major purchase lose in value when I bought it in March and its assumed lifetime is 7 years. It’s my business, those are very reasonable questions, unlike those on doctor, government agency or school forms. Those would ask things such as: What is the exact date when the child benefit switched from the other parent to you, on what legal grounds did it switch, how many back and forth switches were there, and why? Provide a list with reasons and the address of the department that handled the request at the time.
One possible explanation is that the tax forms are done like a personal interest in hyperfocus. But I think another reason is that there are very powerful lobbyists who want their taxes to be simple and make sense. So a mix of objectively simpler and an ADHD thing.
Regarding UIs, I learned in the early days of web design that ONE menu is what a website should have. That works best for me. The modern sites with a menu on top, side menu, gadgets, menu left, not sure if one of the side menu is subcategories of the top menu or its own thing …
I’m a backend developer, and 15 years ago, it was a good thing that I liked to work with a console / CLI whenever possible. But these days, a lot happens in UIs. Jenkins, Nexus, Github, Kibana, … Do an image search for “Jenkins UI”, for example. Why are they even all different? Different config, context, hidden menu?
When people try to explain it to me and go like “just click pipeline”, the only chance to find it is ctrl+F, and when it’s a button or image with text, I’m lost. They have to lead me like: Mouse a little more to the right, now go up, too far, back down, little more left - click!
A coworker in pair programming always stops me when I want to enter a git command in the console and is like: “Oh, you don’t have to do that anymore! Just go to the IDE, now click the icon with the tree, … no, not that one. Left. Well, obviously not the project tree, less left. Down now, where the other icons are … no, the tree! The tree! Great, now see the new thing that pops up. Just go to the dropdown - no, the NEW dropdown. Pick the one that says whatever, now all you have to do is …” And that is supposed to be easier that entering a quick command? Even when I have to look up the help, it’d be faster!
Are you like that as well, or is it not relatable?
UI should have one menu for global actions and where applicable, one menu or set of buttons or whatever for context specific actions that activate when you select an item(s) to take action on. And that’s it.
As for forms in general, paper or electronic, I agree they often are not specific enough about context to understand what they’re looking for. This is a failing of instructions, either in context or a separate page of them should exist for every single form. There are some where the title is self explanatory in context like “first name” in a selection labeled “patient demographics” is documentation enough, but otherwise there should usually be at least a few words explaining each field or set of fields. Paper and ink is cheap, screen space is cheap, put a few words.
As for tax forms, I think for US taxes it’s fine until you get to business income and expenses which are purposely vague and complex to allow for essentially fraud that’s harder to detect, whereas personal stuff is more specific to make sure they get every cent from people not wealthy enough to write off living and luxury expenses as business expenses. But it’s too complex for the average person without basic logic skills. Like temporarily renting out a property until I could sell it after I had to move was ridiculously complex to figure out what I could and couldn’t deduct. The forms are very generalized and the details are obfuscated by filling in your own descriptions on worksheets that often are not actually filed, only retained for audit, whereas in personal expenses almost every single detail has a place to put it on a form that is actually filed.