Is There Such a Thing as "Too User Friendly"? 680
rtphokie asks: "The story about the TiVo get-together along with some recent trials and tribulations rolling out a knowledge base along with the time I've spent recently helping my 80 year old grandfather with this VCR and TV has gotten me thinking about user interfaces and the elusive "user-friendly" label. When someone who thinks of themselves as 'non computer savvy' works with a gadget like TiVo and compains that it's 'too complicated', how should we react? Why are users immediately forgiven for not even taking the least amount of effort to look for a solution to their confusion in the manual. The tendency has always been to blame the interface and ultimately the engineers who designed it but isn't there a point where users have got to share some of the blame?
Why do today's software and consumer electronics users expect to be able to fire up their new toy and magically have a complete understanding of how to use it?"
Learning curve (Score:2, Insightful)
This usually takes the form of a division into 'simple' and 'advanced' modes of operation. This is probably too niave an approach though.
RTFM (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously tho, the answer is yes. Yes, the more complex something is, and thats where everything is going (wait till we can tinker on the nuclear generator powering our house from some closet), we need to learn more and more to be saavy with the stuff.
"Is There Such a Thing as "Too User Friendly"?" (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't confuse simple to use with basic - just because something is easy to operate it doesn't mean that it's incapable of doing some complicated things.
Many examples spring to mind but the telephone is top of my list. With my phone I can call half way around the world in just a few seconds - heck, even my two year-old nephew can.
The Windows way... (Score:4, Insightful)
RTFM (Score:3, Insightful)
Honestly, if I don't figure it out by meddeling with the interface I just love to get the full-featured manual and read it and follow instructions. For me it has worked with numerous VCR's and other appliances. Unfortunately, *reading* is something even 80 year old grandfathers don't do anymore because technology is supposed to be intuitive. :-(
Call me oldschool...I'm sorry...
Re:Mute topic QWZX (Score:2, Insightful)
AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
The word is MOOT you fucking idiot. MOOT MOOT MOOT MOOT
A "mute topic" is a topic that doesn't speak.
I had a partner that used to say that ALL THE FUCKING TIME "well, that's a mute point". I would especially cringe when he would say it to a customer.
Sheesh, are people that fucking ignorant and retarded???
Think VCRs... Think Ozzy... (Score:5, Insightful)
When something as simple as setting a start and end time plus a channel is beyond a large proportion of the population, it's going to be impossible to design an interface for TIVO that *anyone* can use. At some point you have to give up...
The customer is always right. (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no such thing as "too user-friendly". If someone buys a surround sound stereo system it's because they want good sound while they watch movies. They really shouldn't be asked to learn the intracacies of stereo system design.
In the end, it should just work. If you don't make a product that's easy to use, somebody else will.
User Friendly is a myth (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny, we were just talking about this as it related to another post I just made [slashdot.org]. The thing is, there is no such thing as user friendly, at least the conventional meaning of the phrase. It all boils down to two factors:
The phrase "user friendly" comes about by confusing the two: somehow assuming that by being easy to sit down and learn with no work, something is easier to use. Then it's "user friendly."
Unfortunately, this isn't how it works in the real world, at least usually. A tool can be built that is easy to use---powerful, flexible, suited toward the job; or it can be easy to learn---no training required. Usually the tradeoff for the latter is that functionality is limited, so the user isn't overwhelmed. A balance of sorts must be achieved. Most of the best tools lean toward easy to use, and rightly so: you're only a newbie for a very short time. You may be using the tool for the rest of your life.
However, these aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, either. It is possible, in theory, to build an interface that is both easy to use and easy to learn, as long as one does not equate the two, or think that one somehow implies the other. Doing this is rather tricky though. A good example of such interfaces are those for simple tools which can be applied to a wide variety of uses (a hammer, /bin/ls, etc.). Another example is that some games tend to use: the dynamic interface, which starts with a few key options, and gradually adds more.
Thus, "user friendly" doesn't really exist in the conventional sense, which equates this sense of immediate ease of learning with continued ease of use. Rather, ease-of-learning and ease-of-use must be balanced, and attaining something truly user friendly requires a lot more than having icons and a mouse, or fewer menu entries.
User friendlyness isn't always good. (Score:3, Insightful)
Cars are probably the most user friendly device on the market. Just think about the potential reduction in deaths due to drunk drivers if cars were LESS user friendly.
Now, let's go to the computer side of things. Grade school children are able to find images online and print them out because of the current state of user friendlyness. I've heard of "computer class" where this is taught and encouraged, while at the same time, children who use paper, scisors and glue instead are somewhat shunned. (I think Clifford Stoll makes reference to this in "High-Tech Heretic".)
To a very high degree, user friendlyness removes control from the user and uses "logic" to try to make assumptions about what the user really wants. Just look at MS-Word and "auto-correct" which changes "Teh" to "The". (I had a classmate in university with the last name "Teh"... in the end I used vi.)
Am I big on user friendlyness? No. I use console Slackware. I use vi. I drive a stick. Perhaps I like to know that I control the output, and nothing will happen except what I tell it to do.
Is there anyone else out there that feels the same way?
Beware TPB
Different Types of Users (Score:5, Insightful)
1. 90+% of users are incapable and/or unwilling to think. Regardless of how obvious the UI is, they need to be sat down and trained like monkeys to repeat a series of steps to accomplish whatever they're trying to do. They cannot, or will not, stop, look at the screen, and make an intelligent choice on how to proceed. No matter how plain and simple the UI is, it's like they had a part of their brain removed.
2. About 5% of users can make decisions based on the UI to accomplish their goals.
3. The remaining few percent, which we would call Power Users, have a decent understanding of how computers work, how files work, where they're located, how to find them. They know that if they're trying to open a file, they can usually do this by clicking File, and maneuvering down the menu. They can figure out that if their X: drive isn't opening, it's probably because they aren't logged in to the network. They can take a tip, and make a logical conclusion, like "Oh yeah, okay, then I can do this and this. Thanks." These users are very few and far between.
Windows is great for the few who understand that there are common elements of (most) every application. Still though, it's that 90+% that will suck the life out of you every time.
It's an underrated approach (Score:4, Insightful)
On the contrary; I think it's a powerful and much under-rated approach. The biggest hurdle for most people learning a new tool is (arguably) coming to understand the fundamental way it works. After that, the rest is often just details.
For example, if I'm using a new word processor, maybe I learn that its formatting is broken down according to characters, paragraphs, etc. and where to find the dialog for each. Then it's not a big jump to work out how to make something italic (a simple task) or to set up the kerning (a more advanced one). In this case, it would be useful to have a simple UI with common options (open and save files, change the font, run the spelling checker, etc) and a full UI with the whole lot (revision marks, change the number of columns, configure the grammar checker, perform a mail merge).
Personally, I used to like systems that worked that way. You could start simple and learn the big picture, and once you'd got the hang of it, switch everything on and see all the details. Then you knew everything was there and you could see where you stood. These days, everything seems to come with seventeen different ways to do the simple things and an options dialog with 100 different settings, most of which show or hide some feature if the menus aren't already adjusting under your feet before you start anyway (but luckily there are seven different ways to get help). Is this really easier to learn and more user-friendly, or just making a simple tool like a word processor seem far more complicated than it is? (There's an obvious commercial/upgrade angle here, but it's not really relevant to the issue at hand, so I'll gloss over it.)
Re:It's an underrated approach (Score:3, Insightful)
It's like splitting the learning curve up into two steps, when lots of smaller steps would perhaps be easier.
Basically what I'm saying is that when the gap between 'simple' and 'advanced' is too wide, you need something else to bridge it.
Thoughts on 'user friendly' (Score:2, Insightful)
1) Software that I understand what it is supposed to do
2) Software that I have no clue what it is supposed to do.
For example: I have NO understanding of accounting. None, nil. A mystical and dark art done by pencil pushers.
I don't think it is POSSIBLE to write an accounting package that I will find user friendly because I don't understand the basic premise of what should happen.
Similar things can be said for 3D modeling packages and FPS. I rue the day that Quake came out.
On the other hand, I undertand how Word Processors should work. I know the basic functions that should be there and I can pretty easily switch from one to the other without slowing down keystrokes.
---
That, I think, is the major issue of "User Friendly." In the day and age of Star Trek and the computers of TV, the people just want to say "TiVo, record me a good show on TV tonight" and it will be done.
Users will NEVER master basic software until they understand what the software does. Aunt Tillie will never be good with her word processor until she unlearns her typewriter. (She will never unlearn her typewriter because the text field of her mail program works like a typewriter _sigh_)
You can't tell users not to open an attachment, because they have no clue what an attachment is. The concept, if they have any at all, will bring about an image of a photograph paper clipped to the letter or a small flyer tossed in the envelope. You don't "open" attachments, you just make sure they are there.
Aunt Tillie will never understand clearing out her browsers cache because she has no clue about a cache. She will never understand installing a new video codex because those things are outside her realm of experience.
Computers don't follow physical rules and so all of their worlds knowledge and understanding will fail to prepare them for the world of computers.
Logically Sound (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at Windows. A great deal of the garbage we hate in Bill's operating system was stuffed down our throats under the guise of being "user friendly." For example, changing the name directory to "folders" because directory has unfriendly latin roots. The actual result of this great "user friendly" move was Microsoft now stuffs the end user's data in a bunch of folders that you cannot find...making back ups harder. The goal of an OS should be to concentrate on creating a logically sound, secure foundation on which you can build other applications. But we compromise the foundation for an undefinable user friendliness.
It is so funny. I see it time and again. People love the "user friendliness" of MS word when they log on the first time. A few years later they are pulling out hairs as they find their systems clogged with gigabytes of files, odd templates, virii and other mysterious things that happen with word documents as systems age.
That really crappy registry thing we have to deal with came out with a great deal of hype about a "user friendly" registry replacing unfriendly ini files. Instead of coming up with a logically sound and versatile and extensible mechanism for recording intialization parameters...we have this supposedly user friendly monster that bites our tails when things go wrong. The only way we can deal with problems in the registry is to hope that some programmer somewhere was good enough that their 5 year old win 98 program will fix the registry problem with XP when you reinstall.
The parent of this thread was "Learning Curve." The result of the user friendly movement has been to add a bunch of garbage to programs to get the public to a feel good level, but the garbage ends up blocking them from complete mastery, since you know have a garbage user friendly layer in the way.
Instead of "user friendly", if you aimed at the goal of logically sound...you would find yourself with products that have only a slightly higher initial learning curve, but that people can master and build on. Take the threads about driving. The configuration of the driver seat has a nice logically sound foundation. It is driven by the logic of the vehicle and it works better.
When you really have a sound logical foundation, the actual workings of the product is all but driven from that foundation. A phone is totally un understandable until you know the logical premise that you have to hold it to your ear, and that different phones have numbers that you must dial before calling.
Imagine a car designed by the "user friendly" gurus of MS. A six year old could get it out of the driveway, but it would take a certified MCD (Microsoft Certified Driver) to get it back in.
The consumers have the right attitude (Score:2, Insightful)
It's utterly embarasing, I find, that some people know so much, of what is ultimately trivia, about interracting with a big, complicated, proceedure and not even paid for it. It doubly spooky to think that at the same time, that linux and it's supporting structure are about the extent of these people's knowlege. Getting all snoby about how no one bothers to learn some here-today gone tomorrow technological gaget seems a bit.. miss-guided to say the least. If anything, spending 5 years or so obsessing about some gizmo and not getting paid for it is the truely disturbing thing. My personal opinion is that if the specialist (aka programmer or engineer) did not spend the time to make his program or gaget as easy and intuative to use as possibly he is wasting my time - forcing me to understand some irrelevent minuta of his domain. As a result he is an ass hole, just like the sales clerks that keeps me waiting in line for 5 minutes for nothing, just like the jerk in traffic that sits in the middle of the intersection on red. To hell with him and his program.
Re:First Post (Score:1, Insightful)
I also like being able to toggle subtitles on and off with the remote. Anytime I have trouble figuring out what someone is saying, I toggle the subtitles on, find out, then toggle them off. Most DVDs are subtitled in English, so this system works quite well.
No such thing as too-user friendly (Score:1, Insightful)
Really, anyone who says that users should just read the manual is really not spending enough time in the users boots. Most good games these days have far more complex interfaces than the average application, but they are infinately more usabable. That says to me that it can be done.. but for whatever reason hasn't been the focus in most of the industry
Tools are not ends, but means (Score:2, Insightful)
Two way street. (Score:2, Insightful)
Television remote controls which require a CS degree to operate are absurd. However users who expect thier PC to fire up and operate by means of telepathy are equally absurd.
That's the trade off.
I've often times watched office workers switch on thier "workstation" and spend an hour trying to figure out how to compose an email. The interface is simple, write your letter in the big white box, put the email address in the little box that says address, and click that fat-ass button up on top that says "Send". After I explain these little trivialities to them I get to watch thier face light up when they comprehend that "Send" actually sends the message.
This indicates to me that the user is intellectually lazy, or just plain stupid.(As if theres much of a difference.)
The only conclusion I can draw is that end-users(as far as Office applications go) are trained to see thier computers as magic talismans that are supposed to read thier mind and magically know whats supposed to be done. Hence the users dont bother to excercise the reasoning that says "To print my document, I click the button labled 'Print'."
I really dont know how to turn thier minds back on again.(They really are smart people.) Perhaps a psychologist would be better suited to this analysis then I.
On the other hand, if someone tried to sell me a remote control, or a walkman with the complexity of some Office Applications, I would beat them senseless.
My
McDoobie
Re:It's an underrated approach (Score:2, Insightful)
Not really. But she wouldn't like it.
You should have more respect for your mother!
Re:It's an underrated approach (Score:4, Insightful)
Further to your post is that people form paradigms, and these paradigms allow them to "short-cut" their thinking.
A common example is found in our cars: because they have been standardized, we expect certain things to remain constant: gas on the right, brake to the left of the gas, clutch (if there is one) to the far left. Because this archetype is so well-established, we can hop into any car (in America) and drive.
But not everyone can pop the hood and make sense of what's under there. Their world knowledge, while it does cover the driver's controls, doesn't include engine mechanics. The rest of us, who know a sparkplug from an oil filter, can pop the hood on almost any car and begin to make sense of it... and not because the engines are all laid out the same, but because the *ideas* are the same.
Recently, my understanding of car engines was used in measuring the valve clearance on my motorcycle. I'd never do such a job on my car -- too complex -- but just knowing how my car engine works, I was able to do the motorcycle job. Heck, now I've done the motorcycle, maybe I should do the car!
Anyway, to bring this back to computers, the paradigms for computer use aren't any more obvious than those for car engines: one only learns them by getting one's hands dirty.
If you gain skill with one wordprocessor, you can probably use most any wordprocessor without needing help. But to learn that first wordprocessor could be a hurdle: it's not much like anything in our physical world!
And just as most people these days don't bother to get their hands dirty with their car engines, and hence couldn't begin to conceive of changing their oil, let alone reboring a cylinder, many people don't care to get their hands dirty learning the power-user aspects of Word, programming their VCR, or even using the full capabilities of their microwave.
And who can blame them? These are all just tools: tools for transportation, for communication, for entertainment, for cooking. Learning the minimum needed in order to get by makes very good sense: it frees your time up for doing actual, important things. Like having a life.
Re:User friendlyness isn't always good. (Score:3, Insightful)
The last version of Word I heard of that wouldn't let you add an exception for "Teh" (capitalized, even) was 6.
I've used on an extensive basis (it's my primary job function) 97, 2000, and XP. 97 & 2k (and possibly 95) allow you to just hit the backspace, or "undo", to remove an autocorrect. XP's "smark tags" show up after *every* autocorrect, and you can, right there in that menu, tell it to never autocorrect "Teh" again.
"User Friendly" does not mean "The user has no control." It means "The user doesn't have to wrestle with the computer," either through obscure commands that you need a manual to know, or options that you can't touch even with the manual.
You're missing the point. (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't about disgust with people who say, "I don't want to program my VCR." it's about those who say, "The VCR is too hard to program, I can't learn it." Usually, this can be translated as, "I am too lazy/frightened to bother trying."
In my experience, if you have authority over these people, you can easily make them figure it out. Without authority over them, they'll make weak excuses why they shouldn't bother trying. If they have authority over you they'll get you to do it over and over again, regardless how much of both your time and theirs this wastes. 90% of what computer class teachers do is say, "You have to try."
It's a truly pathetic phenomenon. I could throw theories at you about why it is, but I'm not sure why most people's minds work that way, they just do.
Re:RTFM (Score:3, Insightful)
There are situations where a manual is necessary, nobody's questioning that. However, 'RTFM' should never be the solution when somebody uses a product in an intuitive way but it doesn't behave intuitively.
I'll give you an example: Door handles. Ever walk into a place and push on the door, only to see a 'pull' sign there? The reason you probably pushed was because the handle was similar to another door that you pushed instead of pulled. Wouldn't you get annoyed if somebody behind you said 'read the f'in sign, tard.'?
Is it possible to be 'too user friendly'? It's possible to be 'too' anything. On one hand, you don't want a product making too many decisions for you. On the other, the default operation of a product should be intuitive. That's why your watch shows the time, rather than having to push a button to read the time.
Re:My god, that's pathetic... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the part you apparently don't understand. The TIVO uses a big, fast hard drive (a small corner of which is conveniently used for holding the schedule) and a cheap, fast modem. Ten years ago, these things weren't available. Everything to do with computers was about a hundred times more expensive, and that goes for all the gear at the other end of the wire, too. You'd have to sell an awful lot of these expensive things to pay for the schedule system. Remember that people had less disposable income ten years ago, too.
Even today, the TV schedule thing doesn't and couldn't work everywhere, and it would be very expensive. The TIVO gives you all sorts of other functionality, and its main purpose is time-shifting TV shows, while a VCR's main purpose is playing rented video tapes (just as it was 10 years ago). A good programming interface is really not very important, and not going to sell a lot more VCRs.
Adding a clock and timer to a VCR is cheap, simple, works everywhere, and easy to isolate in the device itself. It's not the main point of the VCR, but it's so cheap that it's worth putting in every VCR just in case someone won't buy one without it.
Basically, the kind of technology that allows the more advanced interface also makes VCRs obsolete. If you're going to go to the trouble of making a fancy programming interface, with the on-board computer, and modem, and storage that requires, you're going to make more money going that extra step and selling a TIVO-type device. If you want a TIVO, get a TIVO, don't complain that your old VCR is not a TIVO.
Another ten years from now you likely will be able to watch any TV show at any time. It's not hard to imagine a system that would make it possible, it's just too expensive right now, and too much infrastructure would need to be built.
Einstein said it best (Score:3, Insightful)
"Things should be made as simple as possible--but no simpler." Put another way (by Larry Wall), it should be easy to do easy things and possible to do hard things.
It's funny that you should mention the telephone. A receptionist transferred a customer to me by mistake. After fiddling with the "forward" button for a minute, I was forced to ask the customer to hang up and call again. I later discovered that my phone was an old model that lacked the "transfer" button. It required a "*" code to perform that function.
Of all the places you could post this question.... (Score:5, Insightful)
A quick example... about three years ago, I commented that you should always use a UPS on a Linux box, because the ext2 filesystem was fragile. (there was much more to this, but in the interest of brevity I'll omit it.)
So what did I get in reply? "You're a moron, you should be manually editing your filesystem when it's corrupted and using backups of the superblock." And other posters appeared to agree with him. I don't think I got even a single reply in support of my stance... that I shouldn't have to, that a properly designed fileystem wouldn't have these problems. I'll not repeat the whole argument. Either you will understand why this was a ridiculous thing to say or you won't. But the blame-the-user mindset was firmly in place... it was MY fault because I didn't know enough, not the fault of the designer(s).
Read the book "The Design of Everyday Things". It is a great set of examples of how badly real-life things can be designed... and how a properly designed real-life thing should automatically guide the user into using it correctly. A door that pushes, for example, should NOT have a handle, it should have a push plate... and maybe a handle for the other side, because it pulls on that side.
According to research, there are two basic ways that humans organize data and navigate through the world: "knowledge in the head" and "knowledge in the world". People who use the former are Slashdotters... they use their memory as their primary navigation device. They tend to trust their own memories over things like street signs and maps.
The other type of thinker uses the world around him/herself to keep them organized. WHERE the piece of paper is tells them WHAT it is. They'll trust a street sign over their memory every time. They don't try to store the entire world in their head, and (this is the crucial part) they get confused when input isn't consistently mappable to output.
A car is easy to drive for everyone because inputs translate to outputs in a simple, direct way. There are only a few states and only about five main inputs. Anyone tall enough to see over the dashboard can successfully move a car with an automatic transmission.
For 'in the world' thinkers, however, a computer is a deep mystery. Inputs don't translate into outputs. In a car, if you push the accelerator, the engine revs up, and the car usually goes faster. On a computer, if you click the mouse, a zillion different things could happen, depending on where the pointer was, what mouse button you pressed, what program was running, or what the time of day was, or what have you. This means computers are HARD for 'in the world' types.
That is part of what was so successful about the Macintosh. One button. Short menus. It's still complex, but the inputs map more closely to the outputs, and the onscreen cues make it easier for externally-organized people. The internal states of the machine are more clearly reflected on screen.
Just because something is complex on the inside doesn't mean it has to be complex on the outside, too. A modern car is an exceedingly complex device, and it takes a lot of training to be able to repair one if it breaks... but pretty much any idiot can drive. (and, judging from what I see on the freeway every day, every idiot does. :-) )
Computers can be this way without sacrificing their power. But it's easy to blame the user and ignore the problem when the solution isn't easy. Look at my ext2 experience. Back then, it was my fault. Now that we have journaling filesystems, it's obvious that a well-designed filesystem doesn't need manual editing of the superblock after a power failure.
Likewise, we'll someday look back and realize that gadgets didn't have to be hard, we just made them that way. And it's nobody's fault but ours.
Re:UI is not that hard (Score:3, Insightful)
I hear the "users don't read manuals" line frequently. It's an oft-repeated user interface design maxim, whose only fault seems to be that it's wrong.
I used to use a word processor called Nota Bene, that's still being made (yes, it's possible to compete with Microsoft Word). I bought it in the DOS days. NB 4.5 came with a "quick start" booklet, a 900-page reference manual (!), and supplemental manuals for the bibliography manager and Orbis (basically a database query system that uses NB and text files as its databases). And a reference card, of course.
Starting with NB 5, it became a Windows program, and the manual became a Windows help file. Take a wild guess what the main complaint about the new system was. Yep--no printed manuals.
Nota Bene is an unusual program, but you hear this a lot if you actually listen to users of any program that has any level of complexity. A good UI means that a user can get going on basic tasks immediately, but it won't lead people to the more advanced features that require a certain level of education to use. How many Microsoft Word users know about its ability to place anchored text frames, or its inline equation commands (TeX-like, rather than using the graphic equation editor)? How many Microsoft Excel users know what a Pivot Table is? Or to put it another way, most of the non-programming computer books published these days are there to be the manuals the programs should have to start with. (One popular series is even called "The Missing Manual.")
When you write "make it so that an advanced user can get to the functions she wants without going throgh some idiotic 'wizard,'" I certainly agree. But the advanced user has to have some kind of reference work available to become an advanced user. A good UI keeps out of the user's way--but that's not a replacement for user knowledge.
Re:It's an underrated approach (Score:2, Insightful)
The one thing engineers do though is read, not manuals like a smart person would but the internet. I got so sick and tired of hearing EVERY other person say "So whats the deal with microsoft?", Or "I have this problem with my home computer..." that I started telling people that microsoft was a bunch of dolts who cant program and screw every thing up (Which, mod me if you want, I don't believe).
The people who I said this too began to call less and less frequently and when they did call the questions where considerably more complex. Instead of the usual "How do I print this out on its side?" (Landscape, THERE IS EVEN A PICTURE!) I started getting calls, about how to expose the formatting stroks, or how to get a feature that we didn't even have installed.
So though it may not be a good idea to tell people that the software we purchased for them was crap, or to tell people that they got ripped off, it seemed to work in some cases in my experience.
Re:The problem is time (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, it is true, but how about making life a bit easier for us, those who get it. I mean, I do programming for living and read a lot of manuals, but I can do only finite amount of RTFMs in my limited lifetime. There should be a simple ways to perform common tasks like for example recompile apache with mod_perl, which is far from simple. Or easy way to install and set up sybase server and I want GUI for it, even a wizard. Actually I want mind control, but that is another story.
Everybodys different (Score:2, Insightful)
When you do something you base your actions on a number of assumptions: here a few I can see in your (above) statement.
- They understand english
- They know what a doorbell is
- They what a bell is
- They know what ring means in conjunction with bell
- Repetition helps you recall something
- If you can't recall something after being told 10 times you are brain damaged.
You mom isn't brain damaged, it's just what you are saying isn't relevant to her. It's egotistical to think that it does (The world revolves around me!!). You need to listen to the situation if you want to help."There are no settings. There is nothing to remember. You drag the mouse to highlight the text you want to copy. You press the right mouse button and choose "copy". You move to the new document and right-click and choose "paste" HOW is that more complex than what you just did with the copier over at the drugstore? HOW is that more complex than tying your shoes?"
Did you mean "Drag the mouse to highlight" or "Click and drag the mouse highlight" or "Left click at the begging of the area you want to highlight, keep the button depressed, move the mouse to the end of the area. Press the right mouse button over the now selected area. Move the mouse down to select the copy function and left click."? Things seem complicated when you don't understand them, remember that they don't think in the same way as you.
"Those who ask us 200 times how to copy/paste and cannot remember simply because their mindset is that computers are scary complex things that do not make sense."
So help them understand computers so they become simple and harmless.
Don't Forget! A Practical Guide For Improving Your Memory. [hbcollege.com]
Re:It's an underrated approach (Score:1, Insightful)
reminds me of "how does a radar detector work" (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway, the point of this is that it can be kind of funny what can happen when people's mental models of a technology device are mistaken. There are some interesting comments about this effect, if I remember correctly, in the book The Logic of Failure (author: Dietrich Dorner). It's amusing (and also hugely informative) to see how people get stumped by relatively simple technology such as a thermostat because they have a fundamentally incorrect mental model for how a thermostat works. It's a similar thing with VCRs, I suspect: Some people probably think that the TV "picture" (having no concept of signal that's coming in over the cable or the airwaves) is only there when the TV itself is on...
on willful ignorance (and pride therein) (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you've hit on an interesting social phenomenon. It's culturally acceptable -- perhaps even desirable in some circles -- to profess ignorance about certain things. I can't count the number of times, for instance, that I've heard people proclaim "Well, I don't really understand math", not with shame but with something approaching pride. (In case math-savant slashdot readers have a hard time relating to this particular example, try replacing it with something more personally salient like "I really don't understand women". In my experience, such a statement is often used as an incentive to bond with other people who feel similarly, not as a shameful admission.)
Then again, there are things that it's not socially acceptable to admit lameness in. Openly admitting lack of knowledge of computers would probably be fatal in a forum like this one. Openly admitting a lack of knowledge about the mechanics of sex (once you're beyond a certain age / experience level) is probably something few people would do. (Though there is a Sex for Dummies book, so who knows -- I figure that's something you buy only as a gag gift, and you make sure that you get it gift-wrapped at the checkout counter!) Or ignorance of how to operate a motor vehicle (unless you're a lifelong Manhattanite, in which case it could be a perverse source of pride)...
Bottom up vs. top down (Score:3, Insightful)
A user with no knowledge about the system workings feels he or she is constantly pushing a stick into a jar of what seems to be unchangeable jelly. Is it strange a user feels difficult to learn something like this?
And to put this into the 'current situation': Windows has a more intuitive UI because many users have seen it 'grow'. They or their neighbors have worked with DOS or Windows 3.1 and have seen the 'system'. UNIX boxen and Linux has only been used by a select group of individuals and the rest has not seen it grow to what it is right now. That is why people feel that Linux or UNIX is less 'intuitive' than Windows is.
Re:on willful ignorance (and pride therein) (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you've hit on an interesting social phenomenon. It's culturally acceptable -- perhaps even desirable in some circles -- to profess ignorance about certain things.
People have beliefs about things. The belief stops them from doing the things that other people do to get good at something.
To be good at something you usually spend a lot of time and effort on it, practicing, learning with an open mind, and having fun. It's those actions (be it trying recipies, playing an instrument, or writing code) that make you good. But if you believe "I'm no good at it", then you'll just avoid opportunities to practice, learn, and play.
So yeah, if people believe they "don't understand VCR's" then they are actually instructing themselves that the manual is written in Greek. Think hypnosis: "I don't understand, I don't understand, I don't understand..." That's how strong beliefs are.
Now we all have beliefs, be they positive or negative ones, so it's not about calling some people "stupid". And the beliefs are very strong, and there can be a lot of fear associated with trying to break a belief. People will do all sorts of things to avoid having their beliefs invalidated, because there's a lot of security in "knowing" how the world works (how I belive it to be).
(Living without beliefs is very freeing, but who wants to be free anyway?)
So yeah, the interface and the user manual can go a long way towards being clear, simple and informative, but beyond that, if the user has a blocking belief, I dunno what you can do about it.