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The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think (2016)
(www.nngroup.com)
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this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2024
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I am by no means top at anything I do with a computer, but I do find it said that I tend to know more than almost anyone I interact with in real life when it comes to using computers.
For the most part the way I became proficient with a computer has come down to reading comprehension. I would like to see studies showing the overlap of computer proficiency, and reading comprehension.
In my experience, it's not just a lack of reading comprehension, but often some combination of an utter lack of curiosity, laziness and defeatism. Many other things, like video games, have escaped the realm of being reserved only for nerds and gone mainstream, yet computers remain something people just constantly assume are hopelessly complicated.
I know for a fact my mother-in-law can read just fine, as she spends most of her day reading novels and will gladly spend the rest of it telling me about them if I happen to be there. Yet when it comes to her cell phone, if there's any issue at all, she just shuts down. She would just rather not be able to access her online banking in the Citi bank app for weeks or months at a time, until one of us goes and updates it for her, rather than reading the banner that says "The version of this app is too old, please click here to update and continue using it." and clicking the damn button. If anyone points this out to her, though, she just gets worked up in a huff and tells us "I'm too old to understand these things, you can figure it out because you're still young." She will eventually figure these things out and do them for herself if nobody does it for her for a while, but her default for any problem with her phone is to throw her hands up and declare it a lost cause first. I've seen a lot of people have the same sort of reactions, both young and old. No "Hey, let's just see what it says," just straight to deciding it's impossible, so they don't even bother to check what's going on.
I know too many people like that and I hate them
“I’m no expert so I will dismiss this dialog without reading it” - “it gives me error but because I’m not expert I’m not going to read it” - “it says something but you need to come here to read it - no, I’m unable to read it because I’m not expert”
And at the same time believe in a million conspiracy theories in fields that they definitively are not experts in
I don’t hate them but I do hate the culture and systems that have created them.
My father-in-law got a Master's Degree in Computer Science 30 years ago. IIRC, it was heavy in C programming and involved typical CS fare like algorithms, pointers, sorting, data structures, etc. He was a high school math teacher at the time (he's now retired). He took the classes mostly because he enjoyed learning.
I did ok during the Dos/Windows 95 era, but as time went on, he seemed less and less able to solve his own computer problems. He can't even Google a problem effectively (or even remember to try to Google his problem).
Most recently, I had to hold his hand while he bought a new computer at Best Buy and then further hold his hand as he went through, step by step, the Windows 11 installation/first time start up process.
I think it's a mix of all of these things.
Being able to read isn't quite equivalent to reading comprehension though. So between that, and lack of curiosity, laziness, defeatism, and more; it really does stunt the population when it comes to computer knowledge.
It's the retarded UIs, I think. I function the same way when having to use Windows, Android, typical applications and sites. It's an undertaking to use any of them to some end.
Now why do these people give up and offload it to us "sufficiently young" - they think these UIs are retarded for them, but work for us. Like "you wanted such things, you help me with them".
And they can't accept that such things are aimed at them and not us.
I don't find this explanation remotely likely.
One can walled gardens, siloed services, lack of trust, oligopoly, widespread scams, legal pressure at everything good in the industry. It's not the only factor surely.
Did you accidentally a word? Sorry, I don't understand
add
Ah. I mean, those factors are bad for developers, power users, and/or normal users, but I don't think they contribute to a lack of understanding of how computers work. It's that people don't ever have to interact with or understand the layer beneath the applications they use. That's not a sign of bad UI, it's actually a sign of good UI, but without proper education (the biggest factor imo) it does cause a lack of understanding. Ideally we'd live in a world where you don't need to understand the underlying technology, but it is easy to do so.
Yes. When I use particularly badly designed software, where you know it's from a lazy, cost cutting money grabbing company, and you know you need 8x more clicks, and where any miss-step, means you have to start again, I have great trouble motivating myself to use it.
Same. Then I go online and read how CLI's are too hard to use and Linux popularity would be better were its UI's more similar to Windows and MacOS, and that it's become easier to use now, and that Gnome is on the edge of making that the reality.
By the way, the best time for Linux UI's (easiness of use too) was IMHO when FVWM, Fluxbox, WindowMaker and Afterstep were still commonly used, and when people had a separate user (and possibly separate X session in Xephyr) for Skype, because it was the only proprietary program on their machine and hygiene\suspicion dictated isolating it. Look how far we have fallen.
You can critique UI design without using an ableist slur
OK
Yeah the biggest problem for people who can't use a computer always seems to be that they just won't ever read what it says on the screen. The solution to problems is often very obvious if you just actually read error messages or tooltips or anything
There's an XKCD for that, of course.
I've discovered over the years that curiosity is maybe the most important aspect of being good with technology.
Technical skills, patience, problem solving, organization, all that is critical, obviously.
But more often than not, it all starts with just wanting to know what's possible. I'm the kind of person that, after installing something for the first time, be It software or a game or whatever, the very first thing I do is open the settings, and look all the knobs and levers that are available.
I was genuinely stunned to find out that the vast majority of users never look at the settings ever. And maybe that's why developers seem to be increasingly unwilling to even provide options for those of us that like tweaking settings.
Eh, I used to use those back in the day, but for the last decade or so I've been using mostly concentrated spite and it seems to work just fine (though I can't wait for the AI bros to invent a computer that can feel pain... now that'll make computer wrangling fun again!).
Single handedly that is how I have acquired any of the computer knowledge I have. So it is absolutely mind blowing that people just can't seem to grasp the fact that most of the time what it takes to understand something, is reading. That being said, beyond that, breaking through to new discoveries; it makes me appreciate those with an inquisitive mind that tend to push the envelope beyond what is well understood and well documented.
Dude, you're on Lemmy. That means you're probably in the top 1% of people with computer skills.
I have been considering this for awhile. I'm also assuming this is the largest reason why lemmy's growth hasn't been what we all wanted lool
Not gonna lie, I love listening to the smart comments, I'm not THAT smart. And thanks to reddit being shit (comments suck) I refound lemmy
I appreciate the compliment. However, there are plenty of people who are more knowledgeable than I am when it comes to the grand topic of computers and technology.
Yeah, probably a big sample bias in these comments
I've done support for sysadmins for almost a decade, and the ones that are the biggest pain in the ass to deal with are the ones who can't or won't read the error message and think a little about it. And my kids' friends all have the same problem: They don't read what's on screen and if they do they make no attempt to understand it.
This is why the humanities are important. All those times you have to explain why the curtains are blue is practice for reading other things and determining meaning.
I have found in my years of experience in IT, the best way I can handle an issue/error that a user may face is to work through it with them, verbally tell them what I am doing to fix it while showing them. Another trick from my repertoire is to try to relate to their frustration, or their problem, so they don't feel talked down to.
You are right, the humanities are important.
And it can be about how things are framed and communicated.
100% agree. Often I feel like I'm mostly a therapist who also knows computers.
That aspect of tech support often burns me out. However, put a complex computer related problem in front of me, and I could find myself at it for as many hours as I can be awake without burnout.
Same shit here. Now I know I have ADHD, back then I didn't. I just couldn't concentrate on any complete task. And still one day I started my Gentoo install and completed it simply by reading the handbook and the error messages etc. Ended up using Slackware after that, via reading too.
It's mind-boggling that people who can concentrate on reading pages and pages of text with their content won't read what's put under their nose.
The worst part, is a good chunk of those people don't retain or comprehend what they read either.
That's another thing.
It is upsetting, yes, when a normie says "ha, you don't even know in which year yadda yadda A has happened", but then they can't answer what is the meaning of that knowledge for them, how is it connected to other events and which, what is the value they'd extract from it, etc.
But it's understandable that people with good memory get comfortable with using it instead of thinking. Sometimes thinking much faster is too an ADHD bonus, it's not like I deserved it somehow before being born.
But getting back to computers - it's rather that in their lives text is apparently mostly meaningless, and they expect that from the error messages. So they seemingly don't read instructions or scientific\engineering\hobbyist literature. They don't make things and find flaws in them. They don't have that thing in their souls which in Ancient Greece was called "metis".
You're right. I get hit with the "you don't know which year" phrases. But when I ask further probing questions as to why I should know those things, I get hit with the "well I learned this in X year of school." and they fail to explain the importance. People often equate memorization with being intelligent and real world examples point to this absolutely not being the case.
I oddly find technical documentation of things and informational pieces to be far more interesting.
And might I add, well put!
From the article it does seem that the failure of ability isn't strictly related to computers per SE, but to an over all inability to think about the word problems given in an abstract and mathematically coherent way. They seemed to ask participants to solve what are essentially database query, reading comprehension, critical thinking, and logic problems in the context of an email suite. Word problems can be hard for anyone that hasn't studied and practiced how to decipher them. It's just that using a computer kind of forces one to confront those gaps in what should be a fundamental part of highschool education. Math and science classes aren't just solving problems by wrote memorization or memorizing the periodic table, they are about problem solving. Lots of people fall through the gaps and don't get that one special teacher who understood this.
I would agree with you here. From my experience, schooling doesn't aim to teach critical thinking, or reading comprehension ad much as it should. The way tests and work are handled is more closely inline with memorization. Memorization doesn't help people break new ground, or help develop the tools to begin troubleshooting, and tackling new ideas and problems.
Memorization typically ally only helps with solving problems we already have answers to.