61–70 of 280 posts
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That site has horrible design, that hurts my eyes so much. I've resorted to just copy/paste the text there to my preferred editor to read it. That said, I did enjoyed the story, so thank you.
Firefox's reading mode solved this problem for me.
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 h…
I’ve got 20 years in tech and I find products like Snapchat extremely difficult to use. It’s NOT intuitive at all. Is it just me, or is it terrible?
I’m not sure if that is praise or criticism.
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Should I also learn how to repair my car instead of just taking it to the dealer? It’s called specialization of labor. Most of us make an above average wage dealing with computers and pay other people to know things we don’t know.
Yes, unpopular opinion these days, but car owners should really know how to do at least the bare minimum of basic car maintenance. I'm not talking about replacing the suspension or re-building the transmission, but things like changing oil, brake pads, and refilling washer fluid. The very basic basics. Not only does it save you money (who wants to have a mechanic do something for $200 that you can do for $30 + a litt…
This is where open source is an unsung hero continually advancing not just the computer skills but the really advanced stuff. This study finds only 5% of adults can do what they call complex tasks like navigating and filling out forms in a browser, while 69% could barely work for Uber, barely use Uber, or not even figure out Uber. Open source is sitting there teaching and training people how to create Uber.
Now let's talk about the 5% of the population who realize that losing tons of money for 10 years in a row is not a sustainable business plan.
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I’ve got 20 years in tech and I find products like Snapchat extremely difficult to use. It’s NOT intuitive at all. Is it just me, or is it terrible?
Mobile app discoverability is terrible, it’s not just you. I guess you’re just supposed to monkey around with it and hope you find new features.
> [recommendations in the article]
> * Little or no navigation required to access the information or commands required to solve the problem
> * Few steps and a minimal number of operators
> * Problem resolution requiring the respondent to apply explicit criteria only (no implicit criteria)
I think this is telling us what to do. Stop hiding things away behind hamburger menus and replacing interactive, rich dialogs with a chain of single-choice dialogs. Don't hide context or make assumptions. I've heard designers say things like "you should have a maximum of one decision on the screen at once" and "you should provide a maximum of two choices for each decision." But why? It's just more steps, more hidden assumptions, longer dialog chains for the user to navigate and more complicated logic (e.g. handling "go back" in the middle of one of these chains). But hey, I don't have a fine art degree so my input about a good user experience is worthless.
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Yes, unpopular opinion these days, but car owners should really know how to do at least the bare minimum of basic car maintenance. I'm not talking about replacing the suspension or re-building the transmission, but things like changing oil, brake pads, and refilling washer fluid. The very basic basics. Not only does it save you money (who wants to have a mechanic do something for $200 that you can do for $30 + a litt…
Brake pads are not “the very basics”; they require owning a set of tools.
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I see the car analogy used regularly and I think it’s completely off base. A much better analogy for computer skills is literacy and numeracy. We don’t tell people “don’t bother learning how to read, you can listen to audio books on audible!” just as we shouldn’t tell people that computer programming is only for professional software developers (or anything else involving intensive skill mastery related to computers)…
Being able to use a computer is like being able to drive a car. After a little practice and learning a few rules most cars are pretty easy to just get in and drive. It takes a little more effort to learn to drive stick, and formula one cars are only driven by professionals. Computer programming is like building, modding, or repairing your car — you can learn but it’s an activity done basically only by hobbyists and p…
It's obvious to me that this is because of the bubble that I ostensibly live in, but this is still simply shocking data. Only 5% of people can perform more complex tasks than finding an email with a particular sender, subject and date? I suppose I severely take for granted and upbringing that surrounded and supported me in learning to adapt to new tech. It does make me wonder about the sustainability of technological…
When this came out I was skeptical and looked at transactions that I had metrics for to corroborate with some colleagues. Not at liberty to discuss specifics, but we all rejected the proportions that the study used. End of the day, complex processes get completed when offered to the public, and computer based processes are generally the norm. People somehow get hunting licenses, navigate complex DMV processes, book t…
(I'm sure you've met people who are the inverse.)
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I don't think this is a new feature of humanity. Consider the people you know who don't care to learn about, or pay attention to: Food (cooking, sourcing ingredients), cars, health care (e.g. what drugs do what and how; what makes your body+mind feel good or bad in the long term), electrical wiring, plumbing, "nature", etc. Computer technology just seems like another aspect of the world which many people are happy to…
Wow, I regard all of those to be interesting subjects, and consider that an adult should have at least a cursory knowledge of all of them. However, you are right, plenty of people just don't want to know anything about any of the above.
I also don't drive a car so this skill is mostly useless to me much like some people don't need any more computer skill than just being able to send emails and read websites.