Live data from Hacker News

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

nngroup.com

131–140 of 280 posts

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

#131
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it fair to say that because there will always be more specialized skills to be learned, that none should be learned? Everyone may not need to know how to repair their car, but to perform basic, routine maintenance on it and to learn driving technique as intended is something that, when neglected, can cause major inefficiencies.

Specialization says just the opposite. That everyone should specialize in a combination of what they are good at and there is a demand because it is much more efficient and trade those goods and services that they specialize in for goods and services that they don’t. In the modern era instead of trading directly, we use money as an intermediary. Economics 101 says just the opposite, that you create inefficiencies whe…

You're ignoring transaction costs.

Doing a bit of maintainence can take you 2 minutes, having it done by an expert could take 2-3 man hours once all the inefficiences are considered (getting to the mechanic's shop, setting a price, waiting for things to be done, all the overhead of running and advertising the shop).

Based on my experience with talking to clients and observing them while doing B2B, if the average office worker had decent Excel and Googling skills (let alone the skills of the average vim user) they'd save a couple of hundred hours a year.

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

#132

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...

Nobody is arguing with you about what YOU ought to be doing. I personally disagree with this being presented as good general advice to most people who make a lot less.

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

#133
post #122

And this is why software sucks. We should focus on educating users, not stooping to their level GUIs of old had a specific design language. Like: File, Edit, Window, Help in the menubar -- always consistent, always in the same order, and always containing the same thing. Min/max/close buttons in the upper-right. And so on. If one knows the GUI language they can use almost any application for many solutions at a basic…

Also, in really well-designed UI of the past, every menu option had a hint in the status bar, every GUI element had a tool tip, that explained what will happen when you click on it. I find modern applications (especially mobile ones) much harder to discover and use. If you're a teen, you have plenty of time to experiment, but as an adult, I just want to get the work done. Yeah, you could say that I don't want to lear…

The original user interface components had a lot of detail, and focused on learnability.

Look at the original scroll bars, they do quadruple duty: they tell you how long the document is, where you are in the document, let you jump to the area of the document you want, and let you scroll slowly. Modern scrollbars are a tiny strip that you have to keep poking at to make them visible; how is anyone going to learn to use that unless they already know about them?

So many products have a short lifespan now, apps and websites, that it's not worth the time making them amazing. Anything good required someone to improve it over and over. I save links of cool projects I see on Hacker News and half of them stop working after a year. Almost none of them have their full original functionality after 5 years, and are full of broken links, crashing backends, and incompatibilities.

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

#134

And this is why software sucks. We should focus on educating users, not stooping to their level GUIs of old had a specific design language. Like: File, Edit, Window, Help in the menubar -- always consistent, always in the same order, and always containing the same thing. Min/max/close buttons in the upper-right. And so on. If one knows the GUI language they can use almost any application for many solutions at a basic…

> GUIs of old had a specific design language. Like: File, Edit, Window, Help in the menubar -- always consistent, always in the same order, and always containing the same thing. Min/max/close buttons in the upper-right.

Mistake #1: Windows != GUI

Apple has/had another design language. But Apple got it more right. Ironically Steve Jobs fulfilled Bill Gates mission (~a computer in household) with the iPhone.

Mistake #2: "If one knows the GUI language they can use almost any application for many solutions at a basic level."

No and no. It becomes clearer that this is exactly the hard part: figuring how to provide value to users without telling them they are too stupid to use our software and we need to educate them first. If you build the iPhone it really would be just another Windows device. ;)

> Which also means that when something goes wrong you have no control over fixing it -- you're simply fucked

You are not. In the end, all a user tries to do is changing a value in a database.

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

#135
Maybe it's time we stop catering to the users inabilities,and start making software interfaces that make sense, and expect the users to adapt if they wish to benefit. That was the expectation when I started using computers, and it was reasonable. It not only made me faster, better, stronger, it also meant that after passing a certain threshold, back then, I "got it", I didn't just get that one piece of software, I had some intuition, an instinct, about how "everything" worked.. That made all software immensely more useful to me.

That instinct is getting less useful as every application tries hard to abandon basic concepts in favor of being intuitive, it may lower the bar somewhat (I don't believe that), but it definitely makes applications harder to actually use for people who used to "get it".

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

#136
post #122

And this is why software sucks. We should focus on educating users, not stooping to their level GUIs of old had a specific design language. Like: File, Edit, Window, Help in the menubar -- always consistent, always in the same order, and always containing the same thing. Min/max/close buttons in the upper-right. And so on. If one knows the GUI language they can use almost any application for many solutions at a basic…

Also, in really well-designed UI of the past, every menu option had a hint in the status bar, every GUI element had a tool tip, that explained what will happen when you click on it. I find modern applications (especially mobile ones) much harder to discover and use. If you're a teen, you have plenty of time to experiment, but as an adult, I just want to get the work done. Yeah, you could say that I don't want to lear…

Everything is prettier looking, but pretty icons without text are often meaningless.

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

#137
Some (many) users actively refuse to learn. There appears to be some psychological barrier that prevents them from even trying (perhaps similar to how some people panic at seeing any math beyond simple addition arithmetic). That's not to say the people are stupid - many of them are relative experts in some other domain, but yet when a computer interface is presented, they shut off their brains.

While I find "wizard" interfaces frustratingly slow to use, I think they are a better approach for many users. Here's a silly but not so terrible idea for an email interface, wizard-style:

1. "You have a new email from bob@example.com. Would you like to open it? [Open] [Save for Later]"

2. (opened) (display email). "Do you want to reply to Bob now? [Reply] [Do Something Else]"

etc. etc.

This kind of interface could be handled by anyone, and it would probably work well for people with different physical or visual challenges.

Anything more complicated than this is just beyond the willingness or capability of most people to handle. What's really scary is that some people operate their cars much like they operate a computer - doing unnecessary ritualistic things that have no benefit or produce the desired outcome as a side-effect, leaving some systems in a permanent state when they should be enabled/disabled at different times, and so on. The tendency is to think that people are just generally incredibly stupid (unwilling to learn, not incapable); but perhaps it's just that our UI approach needs to actually be two approaches - one for users, and one for refusers.

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

#138
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much right. Yes its useful for almost anyone to know programming but we can't learn everything in the world that's useful. A carpenter is probably thinking its crazy I can't build my own bench and have to pay loads more for someone else to do it.

You can make a bench with 4 cinder blocks and a plank. Now a good bench ... I guess the equivalent in computing would be spreadsheets? You can automate and build awesome things but god help you if you wanna move it somewhere else

As long as such a bench gets the job done, the person making it wins.

Similarly with spreadsheets. Sure, they get ugly. But they allow to get work done better and faster that it would be otherwise (if it was done at all). The alternative usually involves finding a ready-made domain-specific application and adjusting your (or your company's) workflow to it, or pestering someone to make it for you, both of which are frequently bad trade-offs. It takes time to arrange, often siloes you off your data, you have lots of irrelevant stuff to learn besides your task, and it prevents you from iterating on your workflow. I'd say the last one - iteration on workflow - is the biggest source of Excel (ab)use. Hard to lock down your process in a domain-specific tool if the details of that process are fuzzy and subject to change.

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

#139

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…

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, you absolutely should. And they should make cars easier for everyone to repair too.

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

#140
post #135

Maybe it's time we stop catering to the users inabilities,and start making software interfaces that make sense, and expect the users to adapt if they wish to benefit. That was the expectation when I started using computers, and it was reasonable. It not only made me faster, better, stronger, it also meant that after passing a certain threshold, back then, I "got it", I didn't just get that one piece of software, I ha…

So 2 tier applications?
Post reply on HN