Design for beginners? Design for experts? Are we missing the point?

Photo by boris misevic on Unsplash

There’s a conversation that happens a lot in my institution when we talk about interface design. “Sure, we want this to be simpler for beginners,” people say. “But what about the experts?”

Indeed. What about the experts?

It feels like an intractable problem, as beginner and expert preferences often seem to be diametrically…