Supporting “Power Users” Isn’t Enough: 3 Complex-App User Types

Summary: Complex-app users don’t always fit neatly into “novice” or “expert” labels. Designing for Legacy, Legend, and Learner users leads to more inclusive, effective systems.

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When designing complex applications, practitioners often feel pressure to center efforts around “power” users: highly trained professionals with deep domain knowledge and years of experience using the software in question. While these expert users are important, focusing solely on them means overlooking other critical user types.

This tendency reflects a deeper issue: the overly simplistic assumption that complex-app users fall into one of two categories: either novices or experts. In reality, this binary framing fails to account for the users who don't fit cleanly into either category — such as long-term users who never achieved deep system mastery, or domain experts who are new to the software and still learning how to navigate complex workflows. Failing to recognize these nuances results in exclusionary design, inefficient workflows, and missed opportunities to improve user experience.

Three Complex Apps User Types

To move beyond the novice-expert binary, we need a more nuanced understanding of how people actually engage with complex applications.

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