I have been enjoying working with a client and a video team to create an installation video for a new electronic device.
As we mapped out each step, two questions kept repeating in my mind:
- How can we keep this ridiculously simple while maintaining absolute clarity?
- How can we idiot-proof it to prevent user error from causing disaster?
This brought back memories of a cooking product I marketed a few years ago. As we prepared for launch, I remember asking the client: “How long before some idiot picks up the 500-degree thing with their bare hands?”
The answer? About a week.
That incident reinforces a valuable fact about product design and user instructions: No matter how obvious the danger seems to you, someone will find a way to misuse your product in ways you never imagined possible.
There’s an old saying that when you idiot-proof something, the world produces a better idiot.
But that’s not entirely right. It’s simply the law of averages at work.
When you sell 100 units, you might see no problems. When you sell 10,000, you’ll encounter dozens of edge cases.
Sell a million, and you’ll witness every conceivable misuse — plus many inconceivable ones.
In I Need That, I discuss how product adoption involves overcoming friction. Clear, foolproof instructions drastically reduce that friction. But they also serve another critical function: they protect both your customers and your business from the inevitable outlier cases.
EVERY flaw in your instructions, every gap in your safety warnings, every oversight in your design — they all multiply as you scale. A 0.1% error rate sounds trivial until it represents 1,000 angry customers calling for refunds (or worse, their lawyer calling)!
Product Payoff: IKEA has mastered the art of visual instructions that transcend language barriers and minimize user error (despite my image gag, they truly are the leaders here). Their illustrated manuals use no words, relying instead on universally understandable symbols and sequential illustrations.
This approach minimizes assembly errors AND allows them to sell identical products globally without localization costs. Even more importantly, it’s minimized the customer support burden, with studies showing visual instructions decrease error rates by up to 323% compared to text-only instructions. It stands to reason video instructions have similar impact — but remember that not everyone likes to use video.
Action for today: Identify ONE critical user instruction step for your new product and test it on someone who has zero familiarity with what you’re selling. Don’t explain, help, or intervene — just watch what happens. This “naive user test” will reveal assumptions you’ve made that aren’t obvious to newcomers.
Then revise your instructions based on what you observe, not what you thought should be clear.
Have you seen an epic user fail that taught you a valuable lesson? Or devised a particularly brilliant way to idiot-proof your own offerings?
Tap that foolproof little reply arrow and share your instructional horror stories or triumphs.
And reach out to my amazing team at my specialized product marketing agency, Graphos Product.