# Overexposed - Presented on: 22-Feb-2013 - Event: Meta Refresh 2013 - Locations: India, Bangalore - Slides: - Video: - Tags: User Experience, Design, Principle - URL: https://miranj.in/blog/2013/overexposed > Designers think about the fine details of stuff, so that users don’t have to worry about them. > > — Adapted from _The Genius of Design: [Ghosts in the Machine][gm]_ Creators — be it designers or business owners — build tools that make it simpler for people to do a job. Every tool has [two sides][faces]: one that does the job, and another that exposes an interface to users. It is our responsibility to maintain a gap between the two so that users are not hassled by the complexities involved in the task. At [Meta Refresh 2013][mr], I [gave a talk][video] to highlight the problem of unnecessarily exposing implementation details to users. Little details that are easily overlooked while worrying about the larger scheme of things, e.g. [URLs][guids], button labels, [error messages][help], etc. Sometimes we build a solution that simply passes on the problem to users. We’re not just fairly competent at designing systems but also [extremely competent][competence] at using them. Clearly [we differ from our users][user]. This often limits our ability to recognise goof ups. We need to constantly question the effectiveness of our decisions to ensure that our designs are meaningful for users. [faces]: http://alistapart.com/article/your-website-has-two-faces [user]: http://52weeksofux.com/post/385981879/you-are-not-your-user [help]: http://alistapart.com/article/good-help-is-hard-to-find [guids]: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?DontPutGuidsInUrls [competence]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence [gm]:http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sc85s [video]:http://hasgeek.tv/metarefresh/2013/495-overexposed [mr]:http://metarefresh.in/2013/