Why is Ted Lasso such a great example of balancing power and casual users?
Do you get "it's only practice"?
Ted Lasso in particular, like a few other TV shows and movies, does something that so many tech products struggle with.
I was listening to a tech podcast today where the interviewee was talking about the balance of building things that worked well for both casual users and and power users and how hard it is to find the affordances to do that well, and immediately my head went to the best example of something doing this in recent memory (at least for me) was Ted Lasso.
Let me explain - an amazing feature is one that power users can find and love, but that doesn’t get in the way of novice or casual users. This show has so many of those instances it’s almost ridiculous.
The best one I know of, it the “It’s just practice” scene. If you’re an NBA fan of a certain age, you know exactly what that scene is referencing - an iconic Allen Iverson interview. I assumed that if you weren’t a fan, it would make no sense. But I asked a couple of people who weren’t who remembered the scene, but had no idea what it was referencing, and the scene made sense to them as is.
Then I heard an interview with Brendan Hunt (who’s a writer on the show and plays the Coach Beard character) where he said there’s actually almost a couple of references per show that are like that - if you get the reference, you really enjoy it but they assume that many people won’t and so they have to make that work as well.
To understand just how great the writing staff on that show is with this stuff, check out this video and this one (article here). These aren’t just easter eggs - they’re great layered writing and references to other points in the show (and in some cases to pop culture) for the power users to enjoy, for casual users to picks up some but otherwise jsut work as is.
That’s the craft to aspire to when designing experiences that work across all classes of users.
This is awesome I love how you tied great UX to this show was written 🧑🏽🍳😙. Design for everyone but also for every one