It frustrates me that the takeaway of this post, and the implicit conclusion of many software designers, is "keep it extremely simple, or two thirds of the population can’t use your design."
I think a better conclusion is "if these skills are important, design software which aids in and rewards the development of them."
If your software is designed with some UX which is hyper-optimized to get users to do some small handful of tasks you thought of, instead of designed as a simple tool they can understand, then it shouldn't be surprising if users don't learn to do anything except those tasks.
I think a better conclusion is "if these skills are important, design software which aids in and rewards the development of them."
If your software is designed with some UX which is hyper-optimized to get users to do some small handful of tasks you thought of, instead of designed as a simple tool they can understand, then it shouldn't be surprising if users don't learn to do anything except those tasks.