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The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think (2016)

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Re: The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think (2016)

#101

Post by scarface74 »

smileysteve wrote: post #86
scarface74 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe you don't need to know how to repair your car, but it's easily arguable that every car driver should recognize the things happening in their cars, otherwise, they are an unsafe driver. On the simple side of things, is your check engine light on, are you dragging your air dams, are your lights on, do your tires have any tread. Slightly more complex, recognizing that your car is over heating, recognizing burning…

If my check engine light is on, it shows up right on the panel, I take it to the car mechanic. How much do you have to “know” to see a light?

Most problems with cars (except maybe tread), you get some combination of an indicator light, something smells funny, sounds funny, or your car drives differently. In either case, you either take it to a mechanic or if it can’t be driven, you get it towed.

Re: The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think (2016)

#102

Post by [deleted] »

scarface74 wrote: post #79
ryandrake wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think having a jack stand and a 40x10x10cm toolbox squirreled away in a closet is that big of a hurdle. The tools required for all the examples I mentioned are extremely minimal, and the skills can be picked up by watching 10 minutes of YouTube.

Or I can, drop my car off on the way to work, take the shuttle to work, take Uber home, or bring my laptop with me and earn my living doing what I’ve done for 30 years and pay someone else to do it...

[deleted]

Re: The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think (2016)

#103

Post by scarface74 »

smileysteve wrote: post #88
eru wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plus the point is that as cars became more ubiquitous, once esoteric skills became the norm, such as checking oil, filling up gas. At some point the baseline has to advance. Yes and no. On the one hand, as early cars become more common, more people had to deal with them. But on the other hand, cars became simpler to use over time. Tinkering with your car used to be a hobby of many people and a necessity. These days…

> (I don't even know whether you still have to manually check the level of oil? Don't they have sensors for that these days?) Most cars do have sensors for this, but they often fail, and even if they're working fine, tell you at a warning level, not at a full level. If you want to be a prepared driver you'd check your fluids regularly, but especially before long trips; The bonus is that the sensors can't tell you tha…

There are so many mechanics that will do free or low cost inspections for things like that, why wouldn’t I do that before going on a long trip?

Speaking of which, that’s yet another thing we pay for other people to do. If it’s a trip longer than about five hours we are flying or if we are being cheap and it’s not too far (around 6 to 7 hours) and if possible, taking the MegaBus.

Re: The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think (2016)

#104

Post by freeone3000 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #81
freeone3000 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's some technical blindness that comes with PC use. While people can navigate complex situations fine by talking to humans, put them in front of a user interface and they can't tell an affordance from a hole in the ground. They're not dumb people, they just spent all their time interfacing with humans instead of with computers, so when faced with a technical challenge they don't really know how to start. (I'm su…

There are, but based on the limited information, I remain skeptical of the study. The example of a difficult task was to “schedule a meeting room in a scheduling application, using information contained in several email message”. Many of the other examples given are email related tasks. If you meter and study Office app use, you’ll find that features like this are rarely invoked. For the example above, Where I have s…

Right, but if you give that task to pretty much anyone here, they'd nail it no prob. Even if they had to do it in Thunderbird or GCal instead of Outlook. Heck, I'm sure I could manage it in Lotus 1-2-3. I don't think reliance on office software or oddness of the task is in question -- and if you're saying it's due to unfamiliarity with the software, well, that's still very bad news for all the software writers out there.

Re: The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think (2016)

#105

Post by sedachv »

Spivak wrote: post #60
chongli wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Those are really poor analogies. What you call "using a computer" means using a pre-made application that turns the computer into an appliance. Instead of making inappropriate analogies (IMO usually a redundant phrase), look at where the tasks fit into Piaget's model of cognitive development.¹ Driving a car is the sensorimotor stage. Proficient computer use requires a high capability of the formal operational stage.

The bad news is that a lot of people will never attain the formal operational stage, and what is even worse is that the percentage of people that do is falling.² The results of this study are not surprising.

The take-away should be that it is pointless and counter-productive to try to dumb down the user interface for applications in domains that require a high level of cognitive development. No amount of picture icons and hamburger menus is going to make up for an inability to reason abstractly. What it will do is make it impossible for anyone to ever use the application efficiently.

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaget%27s_theory_of_cognitive... ² https://oneofus.la/files/flynn2018.pdf

Re: The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think (2016)

#106

Post by sedachv »

willismichael wrote: post #36
xkcd-sucks wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Consider this fact: 70% of the adult population of the United States is overweight or obese.¹ An uncharitable interpretation would be that 70% of adults in the United States cannot manage to feed themselves appropriately.

¹ https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statisti...

Re: The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think (2016)

#107

Post by sedachv »

userbinator wrote: post #28

Interesting to see that Japan both has the most "can't use computers" and "strong" users... I've personally observed (and had to help) many times where an otherwise extremely intelligent person seems to completely lose his/her brain upon being seated in front of a computer, and wonder why that is; these people can be experts in various other fields involving significant mental ability (e.g. maths, physics, chemistry)…

> Interesting to see that Japan both has the most "can't use computers" and "strong" users...

There was a good post about this from foobiekr a couple of months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20571481

Re: The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think (2016)

#108

Post by asdff »

t34543 wrote: post #49
mquander wrote: post #25

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've been using snapchat since it came out, and it's definitely gotten worse like a lot of users have said. It used to be that you'd have your list of recent snaps and a camera—that's it.

Then they added stories and a contact list, and then they had to make money with the platform and things truly went to shit. That being said, it's not nearly as clunky as instagram's clone. I'd say regular users have gotten used to the death by thousand cuts at this point, like Latin evolving into vulgar Latin then later romance languages, and totally incomprehensible to someone who's just downloaded the app.

Re: The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think (2016)

#109

Post by [deleted] »

baroffoos wrote: post #73
userbinator wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if this really lowered all the scores, because the test UI may have been very non-standard/outdated/etc. ...or, as may as likely be the case, very "modern". I'm confident to say that I'm far in the "advanced user" category, also having been a developer for a few decades, and yet I still get perplexed often by UIs with lots of hidden functionality and confusing hieroglyphics instead of descriptive text.

Its also interesting how much of what we consider an "easy to use UI" actually just means "Its what I already know". I have been using linux with gnome for years and I recently had to use a macbook. I wanted to change the sound settings so I opened the global app search thing and typed "Sound" got nothing so I searched "Audio" still nothing so I tried to find the settings app and tried "Settings" still nothing until…

[deleted]

Re: The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think (2016)

#110

Post by asdff »

scarface74 wrote: post #101
smileysteve wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you don't need to know how to repair your car, but it's easily arguable that every car driver should recognize the things happening in their cars, otherwise, they are an unsafe driver. On the simple side of things, is your check engine light on, are you dragging your air dams, are your lights on, do your tires have any tread. Slightly more complex, recognizing that your car is over heating, recognizing burning…

If my check engine light is on, it shows up right on the panel, I take it to the car mechanic. How much do you have to “know” to see a light? Most problems with cars (except maybe tread), you get some combination of an indicator light, something smells funny, sounds funny, or your car drives differently. In either case, you either take it to a mechanic or if it can’t be driven, you get it towed.

Take a look at the top posts on /r/justrolledintotheshop and you will see plenty of examples of people who drive with their fingers in their ears and the dashboard lit up like a christmas tree. And those are only the cars that people begrugingly have brought in, probably 10 more like that on the road for every one in the shop.
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