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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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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