4 ms·
Patrick, you should totally write a book of quotes from your encounters with users. It will be really insightful and such a good laugh.
by revorad 17y ago
Patrick, you should totally write a book of quotes from your encounters with users. It will be really insightful and such a good laugh.
- patio11 17y agoTech folks are cynical enough without my help. Here's all the insight I can muster: non-technical people do not have an accurate mental model of how the computer works. They have a semi-accurate mental model of the steps they take to do routine things on the computer: I click this thing, then I type in this thing, then I click this thing, then the magic happens. Deviations from that routine will almost certainly cause task failure. Example: you know how Macs have the menu bar at the top of the screen rather than at the top of the window? I have at least one customer whose mental model is that the screen ends where stuff stops getting painted to it, and then that grey gunk above it is scary computer stuff. It took a day to talk her through finding the Help menu -- "It says Help, at the top right of your screen" because she was looking under the grey gunk bar and literally did not notice it until I returned the screenshot she had taken with a big red arrow on it.
- Shorel 17y agoWhat I always say to non-technical people: All the programs and data in your computer is in files and folders, even windows is just a bunch of files. You understand this and everything else is far easier to understand.
- sp332 17y agoWell then, the iPad must be impenetrably difficult.
- stcredzero 17y agoThe iPad reduces everything to what the users currently understand: the sequence of steps they take.
- Shorel 17y agoI don't think anyone would ever have the need to remove the Badoo icons software from his/her iPad. My comment was only intended to be about desktop computers.
- revorad 17y agoI thought it would help reduce the cynicism and help programmers make a better mental model of their users (because that's what we've got all wrong at the moment).
- wallflower 17y agoThis blog of anonymous IT staffers' actual stories is quite illuminating: http://blogs.computerworld.com/sharky http://blogs.computerworld.com/sharky
- PDoF 17y agohttp://clientsfromhell.net/ http://clientsfromhell.net/ Is this what you're looking for?