After reading your response a few times I think this might come down to whether you jump to using the word "hard" relatively or absolutely.
You seem to describe something as "hard" or "easy" relative to other things.
If your job is lifting rocks and all of them are really heavy, but one weighs slightly less, you might describe the less heavy one as "easy" to lift. Someone else might describe them all as "hard" to lift.
A lot of people in the tech industry, yourself included, seem to be in the first mindset. That mindset can be dangerous as it invites complacency.
This language matters a lot, because who wants to improve something that's already "easy"? Refusing to call something "hard" because it doesn't apply to what you view as the average or ideal user is picking a small semantic point in a way that avoids improvement.
Perhaps this is not you, but I've seen many people use language like yours("idealistic", "naive", "one size will never fit all") to dismiss turning a critical eye towards tech design. The argument seems to be that modern design is actually really good and that efforts to improve it are just a futile quest fueled by people who are unnecessarily critical.
Maybe that argument is right, but I don't think so. Whenever I get a chance to peek outside my bubble in the tech world and I talk with a less tech savvy user it becomes clear their relationship with technology is basically adversarial.
The iPhone can be "great", "easy", "hard", and "terrible" all at the same time. Refusing to accept calling it "hard" and describing someone who would do so as "obtuse, dishonest, or willfully naive" is a constrained and inaccurate mindset.
You seem to describe something as "hard" or "easy" relative to other things.
If your job is lifting rocks and all of them are really heavy, but one weighs slightly less, you might describe the less heavy one as "easy" to lift. Someone else might describe them all as "hard" to lift.
A lot of people in the tech industry, yourself included, seem to be in the first mindset. That mindset can be dangerous as it invites complacency.
This language matters a lot, because who wants to improve something that's already "easy"? Refusing to call something "hard" because it doesn't apply to what you view as the average or ideal user is picking a small semantic point in a way that avoids improvement.
Perhaps this is not you, but I've seen many people use language like yours("idealistic", "naive", "one size will never fit all") to dismiss turning a critical eye towards tech design. The argument seems to be that modern design is actually really good and that efforts to improve it are just a futile quest fueled by people who are unnecessarily critical.
Maybe that argument is right, but I don't think so. Whenever I get a chance to peek outside my bubble in the tech world and I talk with a less tech savvy user it becomes clear their relationship with technology is basically adversarial.
The iPhone can be "great", "easy", "hard", and "terrible" all at the same time. Refusing to accept calling it "hard" and describing someone who would do so as "obtuse, dishonest, or willfully naive" is a constrained and inaccurate mindset.