Design AtlasAn observation from John M. Carroll and Mary Beth Rosson's 1987 paper. Users overwhelmingly prioritize accomplishing something right now over becoming more effective later — instead of finishing a tutorial or reading a manual, they just click and see what happens, then click again.
Here's the paradox: skipping the manual means repeating the same mistake a few minutes of reading would have prevented — and people still don't open the manual next time either. This isn't laziness; it reflects a general human preference for immediate feedback from action over upfront learning.
The designer's job isn't to eliminate the manual — it's to make the manual unnecessary in the first place: contextual tooltips, easily reversible mistakes, and trial-and-error itself designed as a safe learning path.
The demo shows a help doc sitting closed the whole time while the user clicks the same wrong button twice, hitting the identical error both times.
When to use
Recall this whenever you think "it's all in the docs, why don't they read it?" The fix is usually redesigning to prevent the mistake, not writing more documentation.