Even though our computers are now better than 15 years ago, they still malfunction 11%–20% of the time, a new study from the University of Copenhagen and Roskilde University concludes. The researchers behind the study therefore find that there are major gains to be achieved for society by rethinking...
HIG, UX, ergonomics, all that - it doesn't build up. Acceptable complexity of a pretty mechanical normal 80s' UI\UX is the same as of a modern one. Humans don't evolve over decades, they evolve over spans of time which are as good as eternity. They still need the same kind of complexity in tools they use.
A control panel for a loader that a factory worker should be able to use is as complex as a workflow on a computer can be. And that's very explicitly accounting for the fact that loader's or lift's control panel doesn't change every fucking day and the user remembers it, so computer UIs should be simpler than those of lifts and loaders!
You just don't make UI\UX more complex than that. There are things humans can learn to do, and there are things they often can't and they shouldn't.
The issue is that this creates a bottleneck for clueless project managers, UI designers and such. They can't throw together some shit in 30 minutes. They have to choose. They have to test. They don't want that. And no regulation makes them do that, because if a loader has an unclear UI\UX, you might kill someone, while if an email program has that, you'll just get very nervous.
Oddly enough we actually do user acceptance testing and conduct interviews. Most people fall into two categories. Ones that are willing to follow along and see where things go and usually it gets them where they want to go. The other group won’t interact with anything for more than a second because they have one hyper focused goal in mind. Anything that they can’t tell is explicitly related to that goal and they bounce. Like what you want is literally step two. We just need some info first in step 1 to display the right stuff for step 2. Explaining this during step one doesn’t appear to help either.
In your example it’s like expecting the truck to get loaded without ever going to the lift. They just want to skip to the end. They can’t be bothered with the process at all.