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Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

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Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#91

Post by nfnaaron »

fragmede wrote: post #27
thaumaturgy wrote: post #10

My current primary business is IT consulting, which really means that I spend most of my time working face-to-face with people that have trouble with computers and technology in general. So, this kind of behavior isn't news to me. In fact, I've tried often to convince the tech-savvy that most users have problems like this, and I've never been all that successful. The RWW "Facebook login" is great from this standpoint…

I'm a terrible cook, but if I was baking a cake, and used laundry detergent instead of flour (I mean, they're both white and powdery...) I'd absolutely deserve any comments about my (lack-of) intelligence. The "News results for facebook login" section on Google is very clearly marked, with, umm, well theres a picture, and a bit of indentation? In this case, I must lay some blame on Google for putting laundry detergen…

May I assume for sake of argument that by "deserve any comments" and "lack of intelligence" that you're including comments similar to those made by the leets against the facebook confused?

Why is this OK? Why is it OK to laugh at and discriminate against less intelligent people?

What have less intelligent people failed to do, that would have made them more intelligent, that makes them deserve to be looked down on? Is it their fault that they're less intelligent?

How is this different from laughing at people because their skin is a different color, or they speak a different language?

Disclosure: I'm guilty of this. But I've been wondering about this question for a few years now.

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#92

Post by cookiecaper »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #76
jrockway wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I don't get too excited about Internet entrepreneurship. In order to be successful, you have to appeal to this type of person. And I don't want to. (Is there even a single comment there written in correct written English? I don't see one; everything is misspelled, mis-capitalized, or just plain incomprehensible. Depressing! So very depressing!)

I can't create a single sentence in correctly written Chinese. Or Russian, or even French for that matter -- I can cough up some random French words on paper, but they will likely be misspelled and "just plain incomprehensible." What "type" of person am I? Written communication is a stunt that is mastered by a relative handful of people, and polite, formal written communication by even fewer. The others communicate b…

These people are primarily native English speakers. Of course errors are excusable when mastering a second language, but I don't think anyone seriously believes that any significant number of those people are non-native English speakers.

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#93

Post by GHFigs »

jpd wrote: post #11
natemartin wrote: post #2

This is fascinating... apparently users are just typing "facebook login" into google, clicking on the first link, and getting very confused as to why they're not actually on facebook. How can you design a web application that is usable by people with this level of computer knowledge? Should one even try?

Answer: You can't, and no, you shouldn't try. You have to assume your users actually have the ability to get to your website before you can worry about what they do when they get there. Sorry, but this whole thing is a whole new level of idiocy I had not previously encountered: Even my mother (whose sole computer skill is that she can get to amazon.com to buy gifts for people) would be able to determine whether or no…

My God! RWW isn't even BLUE for heaven's sakes.

Facebook users who have made this mistake are also confused by this. Clearly something is amiss--they know they aren't at the Facebook they desire--but they don't know where the mistake was made, or by whom.

Even the basic error is not egregiously stupid. Generally speaking, wouldn't you expect, from years of Google usage, that the first result for "facebook login" to be the Facebook login page? In fact, it is, if you ignore the news results. If.

Consider that: RWW is a top result for "facebook login" (not a "random link"), it does have multiple Facebook logos and the text "Sign in with Facebook" directly above the comment form. These things conspire to aid the user's confusion along with the most damning setter of expectations: the fact that it used to work.

You may understand that Google's results are not always perfect, that the Facebook logo appears on sites unrelated to Facebook, and that "Sign in with Facebook" does not have anything to do with using Facebook. But does Gladys? Evidently not. And why should she? Until yesterday, she didn't need to.

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#94

Post by mattmcknight »

Unfortunately I see the over application of this principle, and the general "Don't Make Me Think" approach all over the place. I build systems for people that use them all day long, every day. They become experts pretty quickly and start looking for shortcuts and other things, if you make them available to them. I have to deal with testers that assure me that if it doesn't make sense to them the first time, it's wrong. They even play dumb to make it harder on me.

People can't even drive a car without training. We need to use progressive revelation of complexity and capability to make things more powerful. Using simplicity as the excuse to give up power- the "who needs a command prompt, everything can be done with a GUI approach" is often a mistake.

Just because some people don't naturally understand something doesn't make it bad, you just have to teach them how to be more awesome, or let them stick with the defaults.

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#95

Post by pyre »

ehsanul wrote: post #88
mncaudill wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is worse than that. I typed in "facebook login" clicked the first link (which wasn't RWW at the time) and here's what I got: http://tinyurl.com/ylapbnu 17 comments and not a Facebook logo in sight.

Hard to believe. Then again, these are probably the bottom 1%, as there are probably thousands that went to that page, out of which some were clueless enough not to be able to find the actual facebook home page, and were yet able to comment. Some of the worse comments: I don;t understand, new facebook sucks! WHere are all of my friends and why are there all these ads for khabrein? How to I get to my LOGIN?!?!?!?!? I…

I'm not really sure whether to believe those ones are true or just people that picked up on the other snafu at RWW and are just trolling.

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#96

Post by pyre »

jashmenn wrote: post #37

It seems like this effect is now going on at websites that are referencing the original RWW article. See: http://www.khabrein.info/news/New_Facebook_homepage__new_Fac... With great comments like: "Joyce 2010-02-11 07:26:55 How in the hell do I get into my home page?"

The only thing I can really say to this is to give a metaphor that anyone (most people) can understand:

  It's like accidentally walking into a Burger King but
  thinking that it's a McDonald's with a new logo, and then
  screaming and yelling at the employees and manager
  because they can't fill your order for a Big Mac.
I've run into actual people like this in the real world. People that have their head so stuck that they are right and you are wrong that even if an employee would try to explain to them, "This is not a McDonald's we don't have Big Macs, there is a McDonald's down the street if you want a Big Mac," the person would further yell and scream at the employees for who knows what reason.

{edit} Someone non-techie that I know in real life made the comment that these are probably the same people that call 911 to complain that the local McDonald's ran out of Chicken McNuggets.

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#97

Post by pyre »

patio11 wrote: post #79
pyre wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have them bookmark your site. Many of them will not understand bookmarks. Teach them to understand. Isn't that really advocating that each and every website on the internet should teach their users basic computer skills? I mean if these people had bought a magazine from the news stand, and it said "Popular Mechanics" instead of "Playboy" on it, do you think that they would just say to themselves, "I guess that Play…

A hypothetical engineer might be emotionally invested in "Everyone should know enough about computers to do basic things, and they should have learned that years ago, so if they can't do them it is their fault." That hypothetical engineer might bristle at being told "You should help them succeed, even if it means teaching them the basics." A hypothetical business owner, told that there was an issue that was preventin…

> "Everyone should know enough about computers to do basic things, and they should have learned that years ago, so if they can't do them it is their fault."

I think that it's more along the lines of assuming that everyone on the road took a driver's test to be there. You don't think that people should have learned to drive years ago. People just feel that you should be able to assume a certain level of competency among your users as part and parcel of owning/using a computer. But as we see in the real world, you can never assume that people have a certain level of knowledge/logic ability. (i.e. Needing to put the "do not use top of ladder as a step" warning on ladders because there are enough people that don't realize that's dangerous)

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#98

Post by naz »

I work on cricket.com, which is clearly a site about cricket the sport. The homepage usually features a picture of a cricketer and is filled with cricket stories. Every single day I would get a feedback email asking for help with a cricket wireless phone until I finally just removed the email address from the site.

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#99

Post by madair »

madair wrote: post #72
Groxx wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did just admit it. Many of the worst-behavers I've encountered act similarly or worse on the internet, and the reverse has been quite accurate for the few I've encountered in that manner. It's certainly prejudice, but that doesn't make it wholly (or even mostly) invalid. Prejudices have a prejudiced opinion applied to them. That snarling dog? It may not bite you, but it's rational to be prejudiced towards believing…

There is nothing good about this at all, this is class warfare and culture warfare all wrapped up together, both very bad and both ripping America, among other places, apart right about....now. You have absolutely no clue about this person and yet you are prejudiced against him, her, it. Is he/she/it 10 years old? You have no clue. You don't know background, you know nothing except that this person just feels that th…

Karma well spent.

The doubled-consonants style is very popular with the 12-16 year old set right now. Congratulations on your prejudice.

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#100

Post by GHFigs »

donaq wrote: post #63
thaumaturgy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just used Facebook as an example because it's topical. She can find her way around Quickbooks well enough, since she uses it as her POS. Other than that, it's all a mystery. The point was, let's dispense with this notion that intelligence and general ability are somehow related to computer literacy. If anyone's not sure about this, I'd be more than happy to talk about one of my other clients, a guy who used to buil…

Interesting. How much effort have these people put into acquiring computer literacy though? It is hard for me to believe that anyone with average intelligence who applies him/herself for a day or two cannot master browsing the web. I mean, if you can look up a road directory and navigate to an address, or consult a phone directory and find a specific phone number, you already possess the required skills to understand…

My mother, for instance, had for the longest time an aversion to trying stuff out on a computer for fear of damaging it.

You're really talking about the same thing. The fear of damaging the thing is the result of not comprehending it. A person can have the skills to use a keyboard and mouse, but until they develop a working cognitive model that holds up in novel situations, the whole thing remains pretty alien. That's how you end up with situations like this, where people are able to turn on the computer, open a browser, use a search engine, log into a web site, post a comment on the public internet, and still be completely mistaken about what is going on.

You can get someone to that level in a day or two, maybe, but really understanding it in a way that enables them to navigate intuitively in unfamiliar situations is a lot harder. I don't think we've figured out a way to teach that.

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