I’m the person my friends and family come to for computer-related help. (Maybe you, gentle reader, can relate.) This experience has taught me which computing tasks are frustrating for normal people.

Normal people often struggle with converting video. They will need to watch, upload, or otherwise do stuff with a video, but the format will be weird. (Weird, broadly defined, is anything that won’t play in QuickTime or upload to Facebook.)

I would love to recommend Handbrake to them, but the user interface is by and for power users. Opening it makes normal people feel unpleasant feelings.

This problem is rampant in free software. The FOSS world is full of powerful tools that only have a “power user” UI. As a result, people give up. Or worse: they ask people like you and I to do it for them.

I want to make the case to you that you can (and should) solve this kind of problem in a single evening.

Take the example of Magicbrake, a simple front end I built. It hides the power and flexibility of Handbrake. It does only the one thing most people need Handbrake for: taking a weird video file and making it normal. (Normal, for our purposes, means a small MP4 that works just about anywhere.)

There is exactly one button.

This is a fast and uncomplicated thing to do. Unfortunately, the people who have the ability to solve problems like this are often disinclined to do it.

“Why would you make Handbrake less powerful on purpose?”

“What if someone wants a different format?”

“What about [feature/edge case]?”

The answer to all these questions is the same: a person who needs or wants that stuff can use Handbrake. If they don’t need everything Handbrake can do and find it bewildering, they can use this. Everyone wins.

It’s a bit like obscuring the less-used functions on a TV remote with tape. The functions still exist if you need them, but you’re not required to contend with them just to turn the TV on.

People benefit from stuff like this, and I challenge you to make more of it. Opportunities are everywhere. The world is full of media servers normal people can’t set up. Free audio editing software that requires hours of learning to be useful for simple tasks. Network monitoring tools that seem designed to ward off the uninitiated. Great stuff normal people don’t use. All because there’s only one UI, and it’s designed to do everything.

80% of the people only need 20% of the features. Hide the rest from them and you’ll make them more productive and happy. That’s really all it takes.