The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think (2016) • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by scarface74 » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 2:25 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #212

scarface74 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of things I could save money on, but I make a good living developing software so I can pay other people to fix my car, press my clothes, mow my lawn, etc. I work during the week, money gets deposited in my account so I can enjoy the weekend doing things I want. We even spend extra going to restaurants so we don’t have to cook!

I guess I'm just with Heinlein on this one: Specialization is for insects. Interdependence is great if you can [currently] afford it. I sometimes pay someone to do something that I know I can do myself. I consider it a guilty luxury. But what's the plan if you run into hard times? When money stops magically appearing? Stop driving because you don't know how to keep your car functioning? Wear dirty, wrinkled clothing…

If I am running into hard times I’m probably unemployed, the little money I save by pressing my own clothes isn’t going to make a dent in my inability to pay our bills - and if I am not working, I won’t be wearing clothes that need pressing.

If the hard time is temporary, that’s what credit is for. If it is systemic, I’ve got bigger fish to fry - downsizing our house, getting job training, moving near a bus line to save money on car insurance, etc.

It’s just like the BS “Latte Factor”. People are not unable to save for retirement because of $6/day Latte. It’s usually because they have high fixed costs relative to their income.

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

#222

Post by aequitas » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 2:26 PM UTC

tomc1985 wrote: post #93

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…

This is why I love macOS. Every application has the menubar at the top with everything in the right place. Apple's design guidelines also dictate that every action should be available as menu item. Preferences can always be summoned using the same keyboard shortcut, File open/save dialogs behave the same. It just works. Except for those few applications that are plainly ported from Windows or Linux without a thought about the native platform they run on. They just don't fit in.

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

#223

Post by journalctl » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 2:40 PM UTC

RhysU wrote: post #168

alpaca128 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some users just don't want to learn. 100% agree. It took my grandma about two weeks with a tablet to figure out by herself how to look up oil prices in the web browser. It was the first device she ever used that was more powerful than an old Nokia mobile phone and her first contact with the internet. We never taught her what a web browser was or how to use it. Meanwhile my mother used a laptop and smartphone for ye…

> ... how to look up oil prices in the web browser. Grandma usually trades oil contracts by phone? Or Grandma heats with oil and needs a refill? Or Grandma has a salad dressing factory? Or...

I was also wondering that! I’m imagining my own grandmother: “No, I said 3,000 barrels of West Texas Intermediate, dammit! Make it happen or it’ll be your ass! slams down rotary phone”

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

#224

Post by whoopdedo » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 2:42 PM UTC

asjw wrote: post #184

bakuninsbart wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a major difference is also that for the teens of today, these apps are intuitive, if they are well designed. They take like 20 seconds to figure everything out. It is just us oldies who grew up with mouse and keyboard who have these problems.

I think it's just dumbing down the options. It's recognition over recollection. It is well known that recognition is easier, and that's why consistency help so much. But used everywhere, as if it was the only available tool, it makes discoverability less safe, hence it reduces it. If street signs are well positioned I don't need to know the route, if there are no signs and I don't recognize the place, I'm doomed. If…

It's always been recognition over recollection. Users don't want to learn how the computer works. They just want to get to their desired solution as quick as possible. So they'll pay attention long enough to learn the correct sequence of buttons to push that achieves that then stop there. Any change to that mechanical process, no matter how innate to the UI it is, will be seen as a disruption.

I used to think that UX inertia was a quality for old people not comfortable with computers. I thought that a younger generation which grew up using computers would be more comfortable and not show the same monkey-see-monkey-do habits. I was wrong. I watched a teenager consistently prefer to delete by right-clicking and selecting "Cut" instead of pressing the delete key, even though he knew it was the same thing and would occasionally use the keyboard. But because the "Cut" command was the first thing he learned that made an item disappear that's what he does. This application has different actions if you drag with left-click or right-click; he frequently confuses them. He didn't know that you can select multiple items by holding down the shift key. This is an honors student who has been using computers his whole life.

Other than students pursuing a computer career, this is the typical teenage computer user. It's not that the UI is too difficult or opaque. They simply don't care to learn more than a surface level understanding.

The objective isn't to create a world of gurus. It's to improve quality of life for everyone. I'd certainly appreciate a computer that allows me to geek out to my hearts content, but I am not the target audience. And the thing about a well designed simplified interface is it's simpler and more efficient for everyone, including the gurus. The catch is a lot of simplified interfaces aren't so well designed.

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

#225

Post by raxxorrax » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 2:57 PM UTC

TuringTest wrote: post #216

raxxorrax wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should be glad that you still have any save menu, as they wanted to scrap that in favor of autosave. Everything coming out of MS the last 5 years has been thoroughly underwhelming, but the UI development and user infantilization takes the cake. Just image everyone in your company saves any document they opened automatically. How would these even look like after 1-2 weeks? The decision processes at Microsoft canno…

Autosave is a safe and recommended UI practice; it has been widely implemented and validated by mobile UIs, where whatever you're doing is recorded when you close the app without having to explicitly save the document (a half written Whatsapp message, a mail draft...) > Just image everyone in your company saves any document they opened automatically. How would these even look like after 1-2 weeks? The essence of usin…

Autosave is a good feature, not only since mobile UIs. But not the way it is currently implemented that any change in the document is immediately committed to the original file if you didn't preemptively made a copy. Totally different to any version control system.

For example, we have a traveling expense document that is exported as pdf after people made their input. Since quite some time people can see what the last employee has been up to. Don't get me wrong, that can get quite funny. Possibly ad breach of confidential information, but meh...

We have no backend to publish to for these documents. It is just the boring file server.

There are certainly weaknesses in this particular workflow, but I would argue that it is quite common.

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

#226

Post by KirinDave » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 2:59 PM UTC

I see a bunch of "this is why software UI sucks" things in the comments here but did anyone read the example tasks?

> An example of level-2 task is “You want to find a sustainability-related document that was sent to you by John Smith in October last year.”

This varies from easy to really, really hard depending on the specifics. I know that to do this in my specific condition I've had to do work to make it easier, and for my academic paper collection it still doesn't work consistently because Google OCR sowmtimes fails on older papers.

> The meeting room task described above requires level-3 skills. Another example of level-3 task is “You want to know what percentage of the emails sent by John Smith last month were about sustainability.”

Has anyone here ever, EVER asked this question about a peer? Or even a client? I work with computers for a living and off the top of my head I'd say, "This is incredibly annoying to do using normal tools at my disposal."

I can't help but feel like a great deal of bias went into these categorization metrics, especially past Level 1, which artificially deflate and cluster the resulting users into a group with skills in data processing and analysis.

I'd surely believe that cohort is rare.

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

#227

Post by kaibee » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 3:03 PM UTC

KirinDave wrote: post #226

I see a bunch of "this is why software UI sucks" things in the comments here but did anyone read the example tasks? > An example of level-2 task is “You want to find a sustainability-related document that was sent to you by John Smith in October last year.” This varies from easy to really, really hard depending on the specifics. I know that to do this in my specific condition I've had to do work to make it easier, an…

> I work with computers for a living and off the top of my head I'd say, "This is incredibly annoying to do using normal tools at my disposal."

I think you're overthinking this. They aren't looking for a NN based solution with sentiment analysis.

from:John Smith sustainability -> results: 300

from:John Smith -> results: 800

37.5%

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

#228

Post by mooreds » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 3:04 PM UTC

unnouinceput wrote: post #40

mooreds wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of "Profession", a great short story by Isaac Asimov: https://www.abelard.org/asimov.php

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.

100% agree that the site was subpar. Plus, the URL was confusing. Oh well, worth every cent I paid for it :)

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

#229

Post by boredinstapanda » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 3:13 PM UTC

AmericanChopper wrote: post #166

tomc1985 wrote: post #93

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…

Well first of all, I’d say that good modern interfaces don’t have any of those problems you’ve described. I completely don’t get this romanticization of old apps. Sure there’s plenty of shitty software made today. But complex and inscrutable interfaces were the norm not so long ago, and nobody even had much of a reference point to describe how bad they actually were. Perhaps you just think they were better because yo…

I really think that while, interfaces are less complex these days, they're much more inscrutable, especially with the advent of flat interfaces. You can't tell what's a control or action item or not anymore.

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

#230

Post by smileysteve » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 3:17 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #174

asdff wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

These people know something is wrong with their car and probably couldn’t afford to get it fixed. No one chooses to not get their car fixed if they have money in the bank to take it to the car dealership.

> These people know something is wrong with their car and probably couldn’t afford to get it fixed.

But, without cursory knowledge of car issues, that decision is unwise, negligent at worst. A car breaking down in the center of traffic has negative externalities. A car fire (152k/year) has negative externalities. A tire or brake failure resulting in an accident has negative externalities.

Even the seemingly innocuous check engine light being on from emissions equipment has negative externalities.