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The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think

512 points by hug 10y ago

techjuice 10y ago
Appears the link has changed to: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/ Derived from: http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/skills-matter_9789264258051-en http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/skills-matter_9789264...
- hug 10y ago
  Of course it doesn't help that I'm silly and left a bracket on the end of the URL and can't change it.
  - qntmfred 10y ago
    you've been demoted to Level 2.
- dang 10y ago
  Fixed. Thanks!
- illumin8 10y ago
  The first test of your skill is: can you determine what the link really should be to actually view the article? ;-)
faitswulff 10y ago
I wish they had breakdowns by age. I think it would be marginally better for younger people, but probably not as good as one would hope.
Throwaway23412 10y ago
Links like this illustrate what a distorted bubble the typical HNer lives in. I've lost track of how many times I've seen a product or company posted here and HNers will say "I can already do that myself." For instance, I still chuckle at the "you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially" comment in the Dropbox HN post nearly a decade ago.
- princeb 10y ago
  makes me wonder how many business opportunities we are missing out. we could possibly be making billions selling illiterates a usb-pluggable physical button that opens a browser window to gmail.
  - jodrellblank 10y ago
    Beaten by Bezos (tm) https://www.amazon.com/Dash-Buttons/b?ie=UTF8&node=10667898011 https://www.amazon.com/Dash-Buttons/b?ie=UTF8&node=106678980...
    - digi_owl 10y ago
      ye deities, the idiocrasy creep ever closer... https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-JK29LP-Doritos-Dash-Button/dp/B01C3JB00Y/ https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-JK29LP-Doritos-Dash-Button/dp/...
- jen729w 10y ago
  Ha! I referenced that very comment here just yesterday. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13104221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13104221
- digi_owl 10y ago
  Even within HN there are bubbles inside the bubbles. I keep seeing _sec people make statements that only makes sense if one is the administrator/dictator of a company network or server farm, and that are basically impossible to implement on a personal computer without effectively treating the user as an attacker.
  - gr3yh47 10y ago
    > Even within HN there are bubbles inside the bubbles. sup dawg...
gohrt 10y ago
Neilsen Norman Group writes articles that convey important technical information in very easy to understand language. Reading their writing makes me feel smarter, and I think it's more than a feeling.
- fuzzfactor 10y ago
  I'm not a web developer, I'm a web user but I have sometimes programmed computers. Quite a bit of human-machine interface, where mistakes have an extreme need to be avoided. For decades. If I was going to do a website, I always thought I would want the kind of thing that would make Neilsen proud. For decades.
whataretensors 10y ago
These numbers are actually shocking. I wonder what the statistics are on level 4 and above, assuming level 4 is programming.
zhte415 10y ago
Salient tl;dr > The main point I want to make is that you, dear reader, are almost certainly in the top category of computer skills, level 3. In the United States, only 5% of the population has these high computer skills. In Australia and the UK 6% are at this level; in Canada and across Northern Europe the number increases to 7%; Singapore and Japan are even better with a level-3 percentage of 8%. > Overall, people with strong technology skills make up a 5–8% sliver of their country’s population, whatever rich country they may be coming from. > You can do it; 92%–95% of the population can’t. A lot of smart people price themselves too low because they're simply being kind. I'm one of these. It is worth remembering that, as a HN reader, self-selected for such content and community, you may also be too kind.
- thinkdoge 10y ago
  I hope in a decade, distribution shifts greatly to more computer literacy.. I get so tilted just thinking about things like... oh why browsers dont have regex search by default... it's because majority of people don't know regex.
  - morecoffee 10y ago
    Not to be morbid, but it definitely will. Young people today will be literate, and the older people will no long be part of the population.
    - flukus 10y ago
      Young people today were brought up on tablets and web apps, they know less about how computers work than people bought up 20 years ago (assuming they had computer access).
      - jonathankoren 10y ago
        But why should they need to? I don't know how my car works, but I drive. I don't know how my camera works, but I use it. I don't know how my TV works, but I use it. You're just old, complaining about how times have changed.
dajohnson89 10y ago
I think we underestimate how much time is required to be really good with computers. I'm very knowledgeable about computers, but I've been using them heavily for 22 years. We have this innate comfort and familiarity with using computers, but as hackers it's a huge part of our lives. People have other ways of life than us, and have other expertise. We shouldn't dismiss their computer illiteracy as stupidity; it's just as bad as them writing us off as "computer nerds". There's also this tendency for non-computer-literate people to be overly self-deprecating. I noticed this with mathematics, when I tutored people @ uni, but with computers it's the same shit. I constantly hear "yeah, I'm awful with computers, it's all black magic to me". But the person saying that is often not even trying, which is frustrating. It's like a helpless excuse to be lazy and let someone else do the work, which is often not that complicated.
- crooked-v 10y ago
  > But the person saying that is often not even trying, which is frustrating. This reminds me of all the anecdotes I've heard about people who immediately click through all alert boxes, to the point of being nigh-incapable of passing on an error message unless someone is standing over their shoulder forcing them to read it.
  - Noseshine 10y ago
    Oh god my mother. What she needed to do was written in plain language right in front of her, and it was nothing technical but something simple like "you should fill out that text field". I had to install an antivirus software that would not nag her about installing the for-pay version, because no matter what I said, she would inevitably end up with the for-pay version and its useless features installed (but only the trial version, she's smart enough not to actually pay). My mother is pretty intelligent and far from senile, just around 65, it wasn't that long ago that she was a busy executive in a major corporation who had to manage not only people but also her Excel sheets and MS Office at the very least. I still remember many many years ago when she first got a computer with a mouse. She moved the mouse carefully between the tips of only two fingers, and taking her hand off of it between movements to stop and look...
flukus 10y ago
I'm not surprised. Typically "computer skills" are taught as "click here, here and here to edit a word document". I think going back to basics and teaching people how to do things from the command line would improve literacy dramatically, especially with the younger generation who have been shielded from the concepts of "files" and "programs".
- ghaff 10y ago
  Why should the typical computer user need to understand concepts like files and programs? That sounds akin to saying that before someone can drive a car they should need to learn how to strip down an engine. There probably are those who advocate that but they're in the minority
  - farnsworth 10y ago
    I suspect, but can't say for sure, that every commoditized technology throughout history has gone through this process where first you can't use it without understanding it in depth, then people try to build "it just works" experiences with gradually decreasing pushback from the experts, and eventually very few people actually understand the thing.
  - flukus 10y ago
    Because those are the primitives that make computers work. Interfaces change like fashion but something like "saving a file" is something that was useful 30 years ago and now. Stripping down the engine would be more akin to coding the programs themselves. This is more akin to saying that before someone drives they should know about the accelerator, brake and steering wheel, the basic tools that they use to interact with the car.
    - SerLava 10y ago
      > This is more akin to saying that before someone drives they should know about the accelerator, brake and steering wheel, the basic tools No, this is something in between, but an analogous system does not exist in cars. If cars had trim, like airplanes, that might be analogous.
morecoffee 10y ago
Even most programmers are distributed like this. My team recently was doing usability tests of a networking library that I work on. We screen recorded a few random programmers try to install it and then make a simple app with it, giving them access to our tutorial and Hello World demo. It was painful to watch them stumble about, trying to debug installation errors that seem obvious to us. Just like trying to watch a lay person try to use a computer, watching these other people made me want to blurt out the answer. Any of the lessons that you take away from designing simpler UI for lay people applies just as much to professionals. Write a better API, a better library, and better documentation.
- reitanqild 10y ago
  > and better documentation. This. A whole lot of this. Case in point: while Java Swing where popular, noobs, including me where looking to Graphics2D and Image when we first wanted to insert a picture. The correct solution was jLabel. Since then I have learned a lot but man pages and docs without examples are still annoying. (BTW: used rsync manually for the first time in a while yesterday and the man page was good, src and dst syntax was described. : )
  - mathw 10y ago
    The problem there being that few people are going to see JLabel in a class list and think "oh, that must be something to do with my image-related needs!" Especially if they've used other GUI tookits, which as far as my experience goes use "label" exclusively to mean "some static text". Well, except WPF, where you can re-template anything you like, but even there, the default Label is just a text container.
    - hashhar 10y ago
      After moving from Swing to WPF I started deriding myself for not having done so earlier. WPF is a joy compared to most of the Java GUI toolkits.
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
jdosnhss 10y ago
I found it funny that the researchers refrained from assigning a computer skills "level zero" to avoid the negative connotation. To experienced computer users zero is just the first number
- grzm 10y ago
  I've heard the zero vs one indexing as offset vs position. The first element has offset zero. Edited to add relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/163/ https://xkcd.com/163/
- duderific 10y ago
  I don't get why they didn't simply call the lowest level "level 1" and the highest "level 4".
luckydata 10y ago
Serious question: why does anyone still listens to this hack? The majority of his results are either questionable or completely obvious, and he's clearly not very good at accounting for his own biases. Some of his work has set back the field of design quite a bit - like the nonsense about users not reading on the internet that has transformed itself into an unkillable monster. p.s.: if you're coming to say "but dude, users really don't read on the internet" then reflect on the irony of doing that in a discussion forum.
- packetized 10y ago
  I'm not sure that you read on the internet. The statistics cited in the article support his points in a fairly well-constructed way. Can you give an example of some specific works of his that you find fault with?
- peterwwillis 10y ago
  I'm blind, you insensitive clod! Seriously though: you provide no evidence or reference, so this comment is kind of pointless.
  - flukus 10y ago
    > I'm blind, you insensitive clod! Are we bringing this back?
    - jonathankoren 10y ago
      Only if we get enough to make beowulf cluster of old memes.
deleted 10y ago
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schoen 10y ago
The clear message of the article is about increasing awareness of users' limitations, but I'm also wondering what can be done to increase people's computer literacy. When we see statistics about functional illiteracy in the traditional print sense, we might think about ways of minimizing demands for people to read things, but we might also wonder how we can help improve literacy. So, believing in the analogy between print literacy and computer literacy, I want to ask that question here too. What helps or doesn't help, and what can change? How early would different interventions have to start to be helpful?
- onion2k 10y ago
  The clear message of the article is about increasing awareness of users' limitations, but I'm also wondering what can be done to increase people's computer literacy. I think those are two sides of the same coin - if we understand the user better we can make software that's easier for them to use, which in turn makes the user more confident and better at using the software. The goal shouldn't be to take away the powerful tools and replace them with simplified tools, but to make the learning curve shallower so users can learn to use the software and eventually to the point where they can use complex features if they need to.
  - aethertron 10y ago
    Agreed. But I think advanced users become comfortable with idiosyncratic aspects of computing that could be recognised as deficiencies, and improved. So as well as teaching, there's the matter of raising the standards of software quality.
    - blakeyrat 10y ago
      An opinion stated to a community that (generally speaking) thinks that Git is a pretty good piece of software. Snarky, I'm sorry, but you're 100% right. I grew up in a world where there was tons of optimism in software development. Programs like HyperCard, FileMaker, Microsoft Access, Visual Basic/WinForms, RealBasic, etc. promised to make (the most common type of) application development accessible to everybody with minimal training. HyperCard's most successful developers didn't come from software development backgrounds-- they were artists, journalists, historians, etc. (See this excellent article: http://www.filfre.net/2016/10/the-manhole/ http://www.filfre.net/2016/10/the-manhole/ ) All that's abandoned now. The optimism is gone. Developers who gave a crap seemed to have disappeared a decade ago. The open source development methodology, who never gave a crap about ease-of-use even when Apple and Microsoft used it as the foundation of their products, have taken over all software development. And I sit at my cubicle, thinking about the now-dead world that was emerging back in the mid-90s, thinking: I could have been a plumber instead.
jonmc12 10y ago
I analyzed technology proficiency level vs adult literacy level. Listing the equivalent literacy level with relatively equal % of population. ie, level 3 proficiency is 5% of population; above a college reading level is 5% of adult population: Cant use computers ~ Under 4th Grade level including illiterate Below level 1 ~ 4-6th grade reading level Level 1 ~ 6-10th grade reading level Level 2 ~ 10th-college reading level Level 3 ~ College+ reading level Literacy %'s from https://contently.com/strategist/2015/01/28/this-surprising-reading-level-analysis-will-change-the-way-you-write/ https://contently.com/strategist/2015/01/28/this-surprising-...
- eitally 10y ago
  That's a neat analysis -- thanks for posting!
- sytelus 10y ago
  This is not adding up... 32% of US population has Bachelor's degree but only 5% has college level reading skills? I think original survey probably has some fatal flaws. May be they should re-publish results after only taking in to account individuals of age 25 years or more who actually respond. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_th...
  - azernik 10y ago
    The disconnect is that the definition of "college-level reading skills" is normative, not empirical. It refers to what a college-educated person "should" be able to read, based on the materials they see in coursework, not on what an actual college graduate can in practice read. Similarly, you'll often see stats showing that the average 10th-grader in so-and-so slice of the student population reads at a 3rd-grade level - meaning that their reading skills are really only up to school materials taught in 3rd grade.
    - TorKlingberg 10y ago
      I would say the term "college-level reading skills" is poorly defined if it's based on some idealalized college graduate rather than real ones.
deleted 10y ago
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calebsurfs 10y ago
You can take the technology part of the test here: http://www.oecd.org/skills/ESonline-assessment/ http://www.oecd.org/skills/ESonline-assessment/ I have to admit I found it somewhat difficult, it's not surprising that most people performed poorly on it.
- tominous 10y ago
  "You must use Firefox 10 or higher." Unexpected impasse. Multiple steps. Requires navigation across multiple pages and applications. Just taking the test is a Level 3 task.
  - vurpo 10y ago
    The link took me to a 404 page. One of the hardest computer tests I've ever taken.
- exolymph 10y ago
  > To begin, enter the Authorization Code provided by your administrator into the box on the left and click "Submit." Am I missing something? /am probably more computer illiterate than I realized
  - k1t 10y ago
    You need to choose the "Demo Test" link.
    - lucio 10y ago
      Meta-UI problems
- Illniyar 10y ago
  I took the test (demo test at least). Only 2 out of 6 questions had anything to do with UI/UX - the rest were either reading comprehension and/or basic math. From the 2 that dealt with UI/UX, both were extremely hard, in one of them I had to send an email, get a token and navigate the site to send another email. If this is what the results are based on, I wouldn't base any UI/UX decisions for web products on the results of this test.
aamederen 10y ago
Well, in Turkey, because of frequent bans on websites, a good amount of younger people know what DNS is, what a VPN is, how do they work, which one is better than the other, etc. I can say that people on Level-1 use these tools to solve "problems" and people on level-2 can set these stuff up for them.
deleted 10y ago
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mvindahl 10y ago
Level 7: Rewrites browser software in Emacs LISP before proceeding
- AmVess 10y ago
  Level 8: Writes driver software in HTML.
  - AstralStorm 10y ago
    Why would a smart person complicate their life with no gain? (unless the goal is learning all the its about Lisp or web browsers)
    - golergka 10y ago
      For fun?
    - base698 10y ago
      Blub. http://paulgraham.com/avg.html http://paulgraham.com/avg.html
      - mvindahl 10y ago
        I read this piece for the first time about four years ago. I've been revisiting it at intervals ever since. As it happens, I had been assigned to a Javascript project at that time after a decade of working with Java. I had been initially dismissive of the "toy language" of Javascript but I also felt that as I learned it, I grew inexplicably fond of it. The Graham essay helped me put the puzzle pieces in their right places and realize that Java was really a pretty clunky language and that Javascript was, in fact, superior. Never went full LISP though -- I had tried Scheme in the past and failed to wrap my head around it -- but it definitely made me respect the ideas behind the language.
  - logfromblammo 10y ago
    Level 9: Builds rudimentary computer out of off-the-shelf parts, on a table covered in breadboard and DIP-switches, programs C compiler by hand on the DIP-switches with a hand-carved wooden stylus, and bootstrap-compiles the full-featured compiler and OS kernel for commercial computer hardware from painstakingly audited source before proceeding.
nokya 10y ago
Good news for politicians. Only 5% of the population actually understand how dangerous they are for civil liberties.
foota 10y ago
Interesting that Japan has both the highest level 3 percentage and the highest can't use computer percentage.
- known 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Samurai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Samurai debates on it
- unsignedint 10y ago
  Not very surprising actually. They have good chunk of people who are heavily reliant on mobile devices and that predates smartphones. I have heard more than few cases where university professors commenting about student's lack of computer skill, to the extent that some of their student submit their essay using their phone.
nokya 10y ago
I see the argument of "not enough hours of practice" in some comments. I disagree. That would be true if there was a direct correlation between moderate proficiency in computers (e.g.: ability to independently reinstall your machine completely and diagnose which hardware component to replace after a failure). The unmentioned problem here is that people are actively reluctant (this is tested, too) to learn the skills that would let them be more independent. I doubt this is entirely related to the total amount of hours spent at a computer. In some way, computer literacy seems to be a similar scenario than cars: the homo simplex doesn't want to understand how it works, he/she just wants it to work while enjoying the luxury of not needing to understand it while posting duck faces on Instagram. Let's face it, computer illiterates understand less, pay more and end up having lower purchasing power. Considering that this is entirely under their control, I find this quite fair (I have different opinions about Seniors, but that's another discussion). To be honest, I can find only one valid reason for this to be an issue: civil liberties and human rights. I'm intimately and increasingly concerned by how much civil liberties have been taken from citizens in "developed" countries in the recent years, and I am under the impression that this is the direct effect of computer illiteracy spread across all levels of the population. Citizens are being asked to vote on laws relying on technological concepts they don't understand, and which end up in striping them from their rights. That's what computer illiteracy is about and that's what (I think) the article should talk about... :(
- thesimpsons1022 10y ago
  my father is a professor and has been asking my mom the same questions about microsoft word for the past 20 years, never learning it. he spends a lot of time on it too.
  - k__ 10y ago
    I understand that some software really sucks. For exmple word processors, I really hate them with all my heart, but when getting a degree, I had to write much stuff. So I sat down and learned the core functions of Libre Office Writer and it made my life better. Even my profs. were amazed how good my papers looked. Not because they were really good, but because none of my fellow computer science students bothered to learn the software and make them look good.
Glyptodon 10y ago
I mildly interested in how the distributions break down by age cohort.
lacampbell 10y ago
This is fantastic news. I am glad to hear I am in the upper echelons and computing literacy - let alone programming literacy - has not caught on. My skillset would be useless if everyone could do it.
jmiserez 10y ago
I would have liked to see screenshots of the UIs they used, but they seem to be absent from the OECD report. A lot of the standard tasks we do with office/business software are unintuitive, but easily learned once someone shows you or you Google it. Even as a designer or developer, it's not always clear what each button does. >participants were asked to perform 14 computer-based tasks. Instead of using live websites, the participants attempted the tasks on simulated software on the test facilitator’s computer. This allowed the researchers to make sure that all participants were confronted with the same level of difficulty across the years and enabled controlled translations of the user interfaces into each country’s local language. Same with the language used in software: Sometimes tranlating UI buttons actually makes usability worse, because now you have to learn the shared language all over again. The descriptions on UI elements are often useless, unless you already know what the buttons do.
- kagamine 10y ago
  I've been telling my SO to "google it" for years. She won't do it unless I ask her to. Then when she does, I do this -> 0_o because, really, why are you typing that? Do you not know how to google? Anyway, all this misses the point. If you have to google how to use a GUI the software has failed at a fundamental level.
Stratoscope 10y ago
I think each of us computer experts should at least once in a while face a technical situation that completely befuddles us. Maybe this way we can get a sense of what it's like to be a normal "non-computer" person. I'm not talking about the challenge of learning a new programming language or framework. We know that will have its difficult spots. I don't even mean chasing down the trickiest bug. That's what we were born and trained to do! I mean something that you would think should be simple and obvious, but you're stuck, have no clue what to try next, and think the whole world must just be broken. This just happened to me. Night before last, my car's ESC (Electronic Stability Control) light came on. I thought I must have bumped the ESC disable button, but tapping it a few times did nothing. A little while later, the Check Engine light came on to keep the ESC light company. Uh-oh. I explained to my friend that it didn't mean we had to stop right now, unless that light started blinking. It didn't blink, and the engine sounded fine. Isn't it funny how a car has this one all-purpose light that could mean just about anything, and the car knows which of those many things it actually is, but it won't tell you? Unless you're a mechanic. Or unless you're smart, like me, and had an OBD-II device that comes with an app for your phone. Now I can just read the code myself! So I opened the app, tapped Connect, and there it was: Motorola Roadster 2. Um, that's my speakerphone. No OBD-II? I went to the website and read the manual for my OBD-II device and found my mistake: I needed to push the Bluetooth pairing button on the device before I could connect. So I pushed it, saw the blue light blinking, went back to the app and tapped Connect once more. No sign of the OBD-II device, just the speakerphone again! Something was really messed up and I had no idea what it was. I'd connected to the device before without any problem, but I'd also done a factory reset on the phone since then, so whatever it was wasn't working any more. Rebooting the phone didn't help, and turning the car ignition off and on a few times didn't either. I gave up for the night (and the next day). Finally today I got the courage to try again. First, of course, I tried all the things I tried before, thinking that maybe this time they would work. No such luck. Finally I got the idea of going to the Bluetooth menu on the phone to see if I could find the OBD-II device that way. You can guess the rest of the story: after I pushed the pairing button on the device, it showed up in the Bluetooth menu and I paired the phone with it like I'd done a long time ago before that factory reset. And then the OBD-II app connected and showed me the error: P0504 Brake Switch "A"/"B" Correlation I looked that up online and found the good news: indeed this was not an engine problem but a brake switch problem that also disables ESC. And the bad news: I'd been driving around with no brake lights and thought I had an engine problem instead. It was only sheer luck that I happened to think of checking the Bluetooth menu. When the OBD-II program showed me the list of available devices (only the Motorola speakerphone), it didn't say anything about what to do if my OBD-II device didn't show up in the list. And when I found their manual online it didn't offer any clue either. I was just supposed to "know" that I should go to the Bluetooth menu before trying to use the app. I still tend to think of myself as some kind of computer expert (in fact many of you have used code I wrote), but I'm grateful for this experience - it taught me to have a bit more sympathy when people get so frustrated with their computers and devices.
libeclipse 10y ago
>26% of adults were unable to use a computer What? This is really surprising. I expected some people to be really poor at using computers, but not being able to use them at all? Wow. TIL
- sjf 10y ago
  I didn't realise this until I heard that Hillary didn't know how to use a desktop computer and could only use a specific version of blackberry. Apparently it's still possible to be to totally functional without using technology.
  - jodrellblank 10y ago
    Trump either: The New York Times reported on Nov. 6 that Trump “does not use a computer,” which explains why he was perplexed at his campaign spending millions of dollars on digital ads. - http://qz.com/829647/donald-trump-and-hillary-clinton-dont-know-how-to-use-computers/ http://qz.com/829647/donald-trump-and-hillary-clinton-dont-k... http://gizmodo.com/has-donald-trump-ever-used-a-computer-1762376695 http://gizmodo.com/has-donald-trump-ever-used-a-computer-176... http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2016/09/27/trump_knows_terrifyingly_little_about_computers.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2016/09/27/trump_kno...
    - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
      He probably doesn't drive or cook either. Is that perhaps as much a rich person thing as anything? I suspect he does most things by proxy?
      - sjf 10y ago
        I'm sure he _knows_ how to drive. Its getting to the point where not being able to use a computer has the same impact as not knowing how to read.
        freehunter 10y ago
laurieg 10y ago
This reminds me of a UX lecture I attended in undergrad in the UK. The lecturer flashes up a picture and says "who is this?". There is a sea of blank faces as a reply. The picture was of Roy Chubby Brown [1] who by some measures was the most popular comedian in Britain at the time. Out of nearly 100 people no one had any idea. You are not average. Not even close.
- Terr_ 10y ago
  But how do you know the "average" person knows the most popular comedian in the first place? There's one day of the year which is the "most popular" birthday for a population, but that doesn't mean a huge percentage were born in it.
- ZeroGravitas 10y ago
  Random trivia: the fictional town in the cult TV series "The League of Gentlemen" is named after Roy Chubby Brown: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royston_Vasey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royston_Vasey
roel_v 10y ago
They should have included a category 'below 0': "User attempts to complete task by using the interface provided to him. Gives up in disgust after 15 minutes. Spends next 8 hours to (in this order) use common automation tools to reach his goals, write small scripts, reverse engineer the data and network formats, and disassemble the executable to inject his own hooks. After still failing to accomplish task, user tries to gradually replace parts of the provided software with his own versions; first using quick glue languages, eventually having to resort to rewrote large core parts in C just to have enough control of all components to make them interoperate. After 4 weeks of caffeine-fueled 16 hour days, user declares war on the vendor and starts writing his own version of the software and ecosystem to free humanity of the plague that is this god-forsaken piece of crapware. After 8 months of battling 30 years of legacy interoperability, data exchange formats and interfaces and the 8th question from Suzy in Admin about where the button that made the one thing with the blue border go away and then made the green other thing go bleep bleep has gone, user flees to off-grid cabin in the mountains with a beard below his collarbone and a crazed look in his eyes, while muttering 'they drew first blood. They drew first blood.' The end." (bonus upvote for the first person to recognize the movie reference)
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- jswny 10y ago
  I don't know where this is from but it literally made me laugh out loud, so thank you.
  - roel_v 10y ago
    It's [OC] so thank you - and I'm not ashamed to admit that during the first few hours after I posted it, it was up/downvoted a bit and it even got to -1 for some time; and that at that point I cried a tiny little tear inside, filled with essence of the programmer's existentialist anxiety...
- hbk1966 10y ago
  Sounds like a normal day. Rambo: First Blood reference also :)
Walkman 10y ago
There is a scene in Silicon Valley (the series) where Richard thinks the interface of the platform is really simple and intuitive, but turns out he only asked Level 3 people and above and it was not easy to use at the Level 1 people.
njharman 10y ago
Some if this has nothing to do with computers or interfaces. A lot of people couldn't do the find info across emails and schedule meeting whether the inputs and ouputs were paper, people, whatever. The problem is they lack ability, in shirt, to problem solve. Something we excel at we can't imagine being hard for others. Being able to discern what the problem is, wgat are the assets, what's the done condition, how to divide up and order problem, what steps to take, what order to take them. How to focus. Curiosity, ability to explore, trial and error. Just being able to formulate a test, determine result of test, and fathom whether the result is applicable to your task. Just so hard.
anotheryou 10y ago
I think the labels are quite harsh. Level 1 can be quite functioning for certain applications: - below level 1: can receive and reply to electronic communication (once told how) - level 1: can retrieve information from knowledge archives of all sorts. Can google alright. - level 2: can organize archives/folders/mail, can organize communications in a group, can find information in less obvious places and google quite well - level 3: has skills that go beyond what is currently needed in 90% of non IT-related jobs. Stunning though is the ~20% that can't do the simplest task. I wonder if they are capable of using an ATM.
swiley 10y ago
This actually sounds like a measure of reading comprehension and reasoning skills.
auganov 10y ago
I'd like to see the data for people below 25. It's unclear how much of that distribution is due to adoption lag.
- speleding 10y ago
  The same group did some research into that [1][2]. TLDR: there are differences in behaviour but error levels are similar and it makes no difference for the UI guidelines you should apply when designing. [1] https://www.nngroup.com/search/?q=age https://www.nngroup.com/search/?q=age [2] https://www.nngroup.com/articles/young-adults-ux/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/young-adults-ux/
- trgn 10y ago
  Kids are worse with computers than you'd think. Volunteer in a library for example and you'll be helping 16 year olds with printing double sided.
- VLM 10y ago
  All kids have been experts on computers for about three generations now. Its no longer a valid meme. There's kids now that don't know what VCR was, but you can assure them that their Grandpa was the only person in the household who could figure out how to program the timer.
  - yoz-y 10y ago
    The idea that kids or young people are better with computers is not actually true. Yes they can use apps, some of them can install them, but for the most part they are clueless when it comes to actually fixing a problem with a computer. http://coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/ http://coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-comput...
    - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
      In fact everybody who seems to be a 'computer expert' is probably comfortable at just one layer or two. Layers include running applications installing applications writing applications installing services and drivers writing services and drivers installing operating systems writing code for operating systems writing kernel code designing hardware designing chips designing chip technologies chemistry and physics
threatofrain 10y ago
I would like to think about the set of skills that don't revolve entirely around coincidental interfaces made by a few mega corporations. Are there computer skills more general than the ability to use iMessage or Windows Live Mail? Because if using iMessage means you now know how to chat, then what happens when NewChat(tm) comes out with a new brand experience? What happens when Microsoft goes Metro or Windows 10? As a society, should we be paying for user training for specific familiarity with proprietary interfaces? Shouldn't Microsoft or Apple be paying for this stuff? This is why I'm generally very suspicious of what people mean by "computer skills" in schools. They generally mean user training for Apple, Microsoft, or Google.
- bryanrasmussen 10y ago
  >Are there computer skills more general than the ability to >use iMessage or Windows Live Mail? wouldn't that be knowing how to program?
  - theseatoms 10y ago
    Between those two ends of the spectrum lie abilities like being able to read and reason through operating system menus.
  - wolfgke 10y ago
    >> I would like to think about the set of skills that don't revolve entirely around coincidental interfaces made by a few mega corporations. > wouldn't that be knowing how to program? Nearly all programming languages or instruction sets for assembly languages are also coincidental interfaces (this time for programming), often (though not always) at least originally designed by some "megacorp": - Assembly languages: typically the respective processor vendor - C: Bell Labs (AT&T) - C#: Microsoft - Go: Google - Java: Sun (now Oracle) - Javascript: Netscape - Objective-C: NeXT (now Apple) - R: A reimplementation of S (originally by Bell Labs; later commercially offered by TIBCO Software (another megacorp) under the name "S-PLUS"). - Swift: Apple So what I would consider as more general computer skills is rather the mathematical or the electrical engineering side of computing.
bkgunby 10y ago
I admit I still catch myself accidentally hitting the browser's back button on a multi-page Ajax form without its own back button. Or having to fill out a form again because, instead of opening a modal or a new tab, the current page changes (e.g., TOS). I've come across countless UX developers who don't consider these subtle details. And this is only a small part of nuances that a typical user faces. I don't care how beautiful or fancy your UX is. Familiarity is king in design, and if you stray too much away from the current experience, I won't hesitate to say that my toilet has better UX.
- bagacrap 10y ago
  Ajax can behave nicely with your browser's back button, but you're right that it's impossible to tell if it will before you try.
djb_hackernews 10y ago
This would have been surprising until a week ago when a friend of mine sent me this image of course offerings for those signing up for unemployment: https://imgur.com/gallery/tCG6J https://imgur.com/gallery/tCG6J Side note: If anyone is looking for an experienced technical sales person in Boston let me know! They have experience with startups, IPOs, large corporations, channel sales, and has the sales gift in a non sleazy way.
AdamSC1 10y ago
The report covers roughly 1 billion people if you take the working population of the 33 countries involved. At a sample of 215942 the margin of error is fractions of a percent. But, what this doesn't account for is that in the original report (http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/skills-matter_9789264258051-en http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/skills-matter_9789264...) you do see a significant variance in the distribution of skills based on: -Country -Age -Income Example: In Japan, only 4.3% of adults are at a "Level 1" where as in Indonesia it is 37.2% which is to be expected when Indonesia is the bottom of the ladder in GDP Per Capita (http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/education/skills-matter/per-capita-gdp-usd_9789264258051-graph7-en#page1 http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/educati...) and in literacy scores (http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/education/skills-matter/literacy-proficiency-by-educational-attainment_9789264258051-graph3-en#page3 http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/educati...). While this report says it takes the 'average cross the OECD countries' it's not clear on which factors were weighted or adjusted. The information isn't wrong - it's just worth taking it with a grain of salt depending on how you are using the information. That said the US market for example lines up very close to the average, which is still staggering.
gwbas1c 10y ago
I sometimes act like a "level 1" user when dealing with applications that I will only use once or twice. Why spend hours trying to re-learn how to do something very basic and simple? I have better things to do with my time, even though I might be capable of using a complicated application.
kelukelugames 10y ago
I worked at Redfin building tools for real estate agents and my ex was at Expedia doing tools for call center employees. Most of them don't even know about multiple tabs. We are in our little bubble about tech competency.
yoz-y 10y ago
What is with the needlessly complex description of tasks? > Tasks are based on well-defined problems involving the use of only one function within a generic interface to meet one explicit criterion without any categorical or inferential reasoning, or transforming of information. Few steps are required and no sub-goal has to be generated. It reminds me of times when I was writing articles for journals and had to find filler to reach the required arbitrary page count.
- woogiewonka 10y ago
  My thoughts exactly. As UX authority, you'd think they at least write clear descriptions.
jrapdx3 10y ago
This is a great topic and an informative article. As a probable exception to the rule, I'm an "older" individual with decent computer skills. No doubt it's attributable to managing and programming computers out of necessity since the IBM PC days. Having to learn everything the hard way has its merits. Related to the article I created and maintain a database application for an non-profit arts organization. It involves membership, artwork inventory and exhibitions. It's a fairly complex task, almost all the work goes into the web-based UI, while the PostgresQL backend/server is pretty straightforward. The challenging part is getting the artists and volunteers to actually use the DB program. The UI is as simple and unambiguous as I can make it. There's only so much to do to make a record with two dozen fields to fill in "simple". One method is using dropdown options to select from where that fits. Also avoiding hidden "tricks" the user would have to know, giving on-screen examples of proper field format (like date or time entries) and providing concise, specific, instructive error messages. Even with all that effort, convincing users to try it out has proven the biggest hurdle to success. I've come to realize a key to the tool's utility is constant encouragement. Live demos are often a useful way to help people "get over the hump" of fear and resistance. Ironically, the "power users" often show the greatest resistance to trying out the web app. While it's made to work as directly as possible, power users fear they will look "dumb" if they don't instantly grasp the operation of every feature. What I've learned (again) is it requires empathy for users' fears and sense of intimidation, and assuring the app is designed with "foolproof" safeguards preventing accidental disasters. Above all it takes enormous patience training users, listening to user feedback, answering questions and never, ever criticizing when people make mistakes.

512 points by hug 10y ago

Appears the link has changed to: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/ Derived from: http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/skills-matter_9789264258051-en http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/skills-matter_9789264...

hug 10y ago
Of course it doesn't help that I'm silly and left a bracket on the end of the URL and can't change it.
- qntmfred 10y ago
  you've been demoted to Level 2.
dang 10y ago
Fixed. Thanks!
illumin8 10y ago
The first test of your skill is: can you determine what the link really should be to actually view the article? ;-)

faitswulff 10y ago

I wish they had breakdowns by age. I think it would be marginally better for younger people, but probably not as good as one would hope.

Throwaway23412 10y ago

Links like this illustrate what a distorted bubble the typical HNer lives in. I've lost track of how many times I've seen a product or company posted here and HNers will say "I can already do that myself." For instance, I still chuckle at the "you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially" comment in the Dropbox HN post nearly a decade ago.

princeb 10y ago
makes me wonder how many business opportunities we are missing out. we could possibly be making billions selling illiterates a usb-pluggable physical button that opens a browser window to gmail.
- jodrellblank 10y ago
  Beaten by Bezos (tm) https://www.amazon.com/Dash-Buttons/b?ie=UTF8&node=10667898011 https://www.amazon.com/Dash-Buttons/b?ie=UTF8&node=106678980...
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    ye deities, the idiocrasy creep ever closer... https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-JK29LP-Doritos-Dash-Button/dp/B01C3JB00Y/ https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-JK29LP-Doritos-Dash-Button/dp/...
jen729w 10y ago
Ha! I referenced that very comment here just yesterday. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13104221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13104221
digi_owl 10y ago
Even within HN there are bubbles inside the bubbles. I keep seeing _sec people make statements that only makes sense if one is the administrator/dictator of a company network or server farm, and that are basically impossible to implement on a personal computer without effectively treating the user as an attacker.
- gr3yh47 10y ago
  > Even within HN there are bubbles inside the bubbles. sup dawg...

gohrt 10y ago

Neilsen Norman Group writes articles that convey important technical information in very easy to understand language. Reading their writing makes me feel smarter, and I think it's more than a feeling.

fuzzfactor 10y ago
I'm not a web developer, I'm a web user but I have sometimes programmed computers. Quite a bit of human-machine interface, where mistakes have an extreme need to be avoided. For decades. If I was going to do a website, I always thought I would want the kind of thing that would make Neilsen proud. For decades.

whataretensors 10y ago

These numbers are actually shocking. I wonder what the statistics are on level 4 and above, assuming level 4 is programming.

zhte415 10y ago

Salient tl;dr > The main point I want to make is that you, dear reader, are almost certainly in the top category of computer skills, level 3. In the United States, only 5% of the population has these high computer skills. In Australia and the UK 6% are at this level; in Canada and across Northern Europe the number increases to 7%; Singapore and Japan are even better with a level-3 percentage of 8%. > Overall, people with strong technology skills make up a 5–8% sliver of their country’s population, whatever rich country they may be coming from. > You can do it; 92%–95% of the population can’t. A lot of smart people price themselves too low because they're simply being kind. I'm one of these. It is worth remembering that, as a HN reader, self-selected for such content and community, you may also be too kind.

thinkdoge 10y ago
I hope in a decade, distribution shifts greatly to more computer literacy.. I get so tilted just thinking about things like... oh why browsers dont have regex search by default... it's because majority of people don't know regex.
- morecoffee 10y ago
  Not to be morbid, but it definitely will. Young people today will be literate, and the older people will no long be part of the population.
  - flukus 10y ago
    Young people today were brought up on tablets and web apps, they know less about how computers work than people bought up 20 years ago (assuming they had computer access).
    - jonathankoren 10y ago
      But why should they need to? I don't know how my car works, but I drive. I don't know how my camera works, but I use it. I don't know how my TV works, but I use it. You're just old, complaining about how times have changed.

dajohnson89 10y ago

I think we underestimate how much time is required to be really good with computers. I'm very knowledgeable about computers, but I've been using them heavily for 22 years. We have this innate comfort and familiarity with using computers, but as hackers it's a huge part of our lives. People have other ways of life than us, and have other expertise. We shouldn't dismiss their computer illiteracy as stupidity; it's just as bad as them writing us off as "computer nerds". There's also this tendency for non-computer-literate people to be overly self-deprecating. I noticed this with mathematics, when I tutored people @ uni, but with computers it's the same shit. I constantly hear "yeah, I'm awful with computers, it's all black magic to me". But the person saying that is often not even trying, which is frustrating. It's like a helpless excuse to be lazy and let someone else do the work, which is often not that complicated.

crooked-v 10y ago
> But the person saying that is often not even trying, which is frustrating. This reminds me of all the anecdotes I've heard about people who immediately click through all alert boxes, to the point of being nigh-incapable of passing on an error message unless someone is standing over their shoulder forcing them to read it.
- Noseshine 10y ago
  Oh god my mother. What she needed to do was written in plain language right in front of her, and it was nothing technical but something simple like "you should fill out that text field". I had to install an antivirus software that would not nag her about installing the for-pay version, because no matter what I said, she would inevitably end up with the for-pay version and its useless features installed (but only the trial version, she's smart enough not to actually pay). My mother is pretty intelligent and far from senile, just around 65, it wasn't that long ago that she was a busy executive in a major corporation who had to manage not only people but also her Excel sheets and MS Office at the very least. I still remember many many years ago when she first got a computer with a mouse. She moved the mouse carefully between the tips of only two fingers, and taking her hand off of it between movements to stop and look...

flukus 10y ago

I'm not surprised. Typically "computer skills" are taught as "click here, here and here to edit a word document". I think going back to basics and teaching people how to do things from the command line would improve literacy dramatically, especially with the younger generation who have been shielded from the concepts of "files" and "programs".

ghaff 10y ago
Why should the typical computer user need to understand concepts like files and programs? That sounds akin to saying that before someone can drive a car they should need to learn how to strip down an engine. There probably are those who advocate that but they're in the minority
- farnsworth 10y ago
  I suspect, but can't say for sure, that every commoditized technology throughout history has gone through this process where first you can't use it without understanding it in depth, then people try to build "it just works" experiences with gradually decreasing pushback from the experts, and eventually very few people actually understand the thing.
- flukus 10y ago
  Because those are the primitives that make computers work. Interfaces change like fashion but something like "saving a file" is something that was useful 30 years ago and now. Stripping down the engine would be more akin to coding the programs themselves. This is more akin to saying that before someone drives they should know about the accelerator, brake and steering wheel, the basic tools that they use to interact with the car.
  - SerLava 10y ago
    > This is more akin to saying that before someone drives they should know about the accelerator, brake and steering wheel, the basic tools No, this is something in between, but an analogous system does not exist in cars. If cars had trim, like airplanes, that might be analogous.

morecoffee 10y ago

Even most programmers are distributed like this. My team recently was doing usability tests of a networking library that I work on. We screen recorded a few random programmers try to install it and then make a simple app with it, giving them access to our tutorial and Hello World demo. It was painful to watch them stumble about, trying to debug installation errors that seem obvious to us. Just like trying to watch a lay person try to use a computer, watching these other people made me want to blurt out the answer. Any of the lessons that you take away from designing simpler UI for lay people applies just as much to professionals. Write a better API, a better library, and better documentation.

reitanqild 10y ago
> and better documentation. This. A whole lot of this. Case in point: while Java Swing where popular, noobs, including me where looking to Graphics2D and Image when we first wanted to insert a picture. The correct solution was jLabel. Since then I have learned a lot but man pages and docs without examples are still annoying. (BTW: used rsync manually for the first time in a while yesterday and the man page was good, src and dst syntax was described. : )
- mathw 10y ago
  The problem there being that few people are going to see JLabel in a class list and think "oh, that must be something to do with my image-related needs!" Especially if they've used other GUI tookits, which as far as my experience goes use "label" exclusively to mean "some static text". Well, except WPF, where you can re-template anything you like, but even there, the default Label is just a text container.
  - hashhar 10y ago
    After moving from Swing to WPF I started deriding myself for not having done so earlier. WPF is a joy compared to most of the Java GUI toolkits.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago

jdosnhss 10y ago

I found it funny that the researchers refrained from assigning a computer skills "level zero" to avoid the negative connotation. To experienced computer users zero is just the first number

grzm 10y ago
I've heard the zero vs one indexing as offset vs position. The first element has offset zero. Edited to add relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/163/ https://xkcd.com/163/
duderific 10y ago
I don't get why they didn't simply call the lowest level "level 1" and the highest "level 4".

luckydata 10y ago

Serious question: why does anyone still listens to this hack? The majority of his results are either questionable or completely obvious, and he's clearly not very good at accounting for his own biases. Some of his work has set back the field of design quite a bit - like the nonsense about users not reading on the internet that has transformed itself into an unkillable monster. p.s.: if you're coming to say "but dude, users really don't read on the internet" then reflect on the irony of doing that in a discussion forum.

packetized 10y ago
I'm not sure that you read on the internet. The statistics cited in the article support his points in a fairly well-constructed way. Can you give an example of some specific works of his that you find fault with?
peterwwillis 10y ago
I'm blind, you insensitive clod! Seriously though: you provide no evidence or reference, so this comment is kind of pointless.
- flukus 10y ago
  > I'm blind, you insensitive clod! Are we bringing this back?
  - jonathankoren 10y ago
    Only if we get enough to make beowulf cluster of old memes.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

schoen 10y ago

The clear message of the article is about increasing awareness of users' limitations, but I'm also wondering what can be done to increase people's computer literacy. When we see statistics about functional illiteracy in the traditional print sense, we might think about ways of minimizing demands for people to read things, but we might also wonder how we can help improve literacy. So, believing in the analogy between print literacy and computer literacy, I want to ask that question here too. What helps or doesn't help, and what can change? How early would different interventions have to start to be helpful?

onion2k 10y ago
The clear message of the article is about increasing awareness of users' limitations, but I'm also wondering what can be done to increase people's computer literacy. I think those are two sides of the same coin - if we understand the user better we can make software that's easier for them to use, which in turn makes the user more confident and better at using the software. The goal shouldn't be to take away the powerful tools and replace them with simplified tools, but to make the learning curve shallower so users can learn to use the software and eventually to the point where they can use complex features if they need to.
- aethertron 10y ago
  Agreed. But I think advanced users become comfortable with idiosyncratic aspects of computing that could be recognised as deficiencies, and improved. So as well as teaching, there's the matter of raising the standards of software quality.
  - blakeyrat 10y ago
    An opinion stated to a community that (generally speaking) thinks that Git is a pretty good piece of software. Snarky, I'm sorry, but you're 100% right. I grew up in a world where there was tons of optimism in software development. Programs like HyperCard, FileMaker, Microsoft Access, Visual Basic/WinForms, RealBasic, etc. promised to make (the most common type of) application development accessible to everybody with minimal training. HyperCard's most successful developers didn't come from software development backgrounds-- they were artists, journalists, historians, etc. (See this excellent article: http://www.filfre.net/2016/10/the-manhole/ http://www.filfre.net/2016/10/the-manhole/ ) All that's abandoned now. The optimism is gone. Developers who gave a crap seemed to have disappeared a decade ago. The open source development methodology, who never gave a crap about ease-of-use even when Apple and Microsoft used it as the foundation of their products, have taken over all software development. And I sit at my cubicle, thinking about the now-dead world that was emerging back in the mid-90s, thinking: I could have been a plumber instead.

jonmc12 10y ago

I analyzed technology proficiency level vs adult literacy level. Listing the equivalent literacy level with relatively equal % of population. ie, level 3 proficiency is 5% of population; above a college reading level is 5% of adult population: Cant use computers ~ Under 4th Grade level including illiterate Below level 1 ~ 4-6th grade reading level Level 1 ~ 6-10th grade reading level Level 2 ~ 10th-college reading level Level 3 ~ College+ reading level Literacy %'s from https://contently.com/strategist/2015/01/28/this-surprising-reading-level-analysis-will-change-the-way-you-write/ https://contently.com/strategist/2015/01/28/this-surprising-...

eitally 10y ago
That's a neat analysis -- thanks for posting!
sytelus 10y ago
This is not adding up... 32% of US population has Bachelor's degree but only 5% has college level reading skills? I think original survey probably has some fatal flaws. May be they should re-publish results after only taking in to account individuals of age 25 years or more who actually respond. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_th...
- azernik 10y ago
  The disconnect is that the definition of "college-level reading skills" is normative, not empirical. It refers to what a college-educated person "should" be able to read, based on the materials they see in coursework, not on what an actual college graduate can in practice read. Similarly, you'll often see stats showing that the average 10th-grader in so-and-so slice of the student population reads at a 3rd-grade level - meaning that their reading skills are really only up to school materials taught in 3rd grade.
  - TorKlingberg 10y ago
    I would say the term "college-level reading skills" is poorly defined if it's based on some idealalized college graduate rather than real ones.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

calebsurfs 10y ago

You can take the technology part of the test here: http://www.oecd.org/skills/ESonline-assessment/ http://www.oecd.org/skills/ESonline-assessment/ I have to admit I found it somewhat difficult, it's not surprising that most people performed poorly on it.

tominous 10y ago
"You must use Firefox 10 or higher." Unexpected impasse. Multiple steps. Requires navigation across multiple pages and applications. Just taking the test is a Level 3 task.
- vurpo 10y ago
  The link took me to a 404 page. One of the hardest computer tests I've ever taken.
exolymph 10y ago
> To begin, enter the Authorization Code provided by your administrator into the box on the left and click "Submit." Am I missing something? /am probably more computer illiterate than I realized
- k1t 10y ago
  You need to choose the "Demo Test" link.
  - lucio 10y ago
    Meta-UI problems
Illniyar 10y ago
I took the test (demo test at least). Only 2 out of 6 questions had anything to do with UI/UX - the rest were either reading comprehension and/or basic math. From the 2 that dealt with UI/UX, both were extremely hard, in one of them I had to send an email, get a token and navigate the site to send another email. If this is what the results are based on, I wouldn't base any UI/UX decisions for web products on the results of this test.

aamederen 10y ago

Well, in Turkey, because of frequent bans on websites, a good amount of younger people know what DNS is, what a VPN is, how do they work, which one is better than the other, etc. I can say that people on Level-1 use these tools to solve "problems" and people on level-2 can set these stuff up for them.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

mvindahl 10y ago

Level 7: Rewrites browser software in Emacs LISP before proceeding

AmVess 10y ago
Level 8: Writes driver software in HTML.
- AstralStorm 10y ago
  Why would a smart person complicate their life with no gain? (unless the goal is learning all the its about Lisp or web browsers)
  - golergka 10y ago
    For fun?
  - base698 10y ago
    Blub. http://paulgraham.com/avg.html http://paulgraham.com/avg.html
    - mvindahl 10y ago
      I read this piece for the first time about four years ago. I've been revisiting it at intervals ever since. As it happens, I had been assigned to a Javascript project at that time after a decade of working with Java. I had been initially dismissive of the "toy language" of Javascript but I also felt that as I learned it, I grew inexplicably fond of it. The Graham essay helped me put the puzzle pieces in their right places and realize that Java was really a pretty clunky language and that Javascript was, in fact, superior. Never went full LISP though -- I had tried Scheme in the past and failed to wrap my head around it -- but it definitely made me respect the ideas behind the language.
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  Level 9: Builds rudimentary computer out of off-the-shelf parts, on a table covered in breadboard and DIP-switches, programs C compiler by hand on the DIP-switches with a hand-carved wooden stylus, and bootstrap-compiles the full-featured compiler and OS kernel for commercial computer hardware from painstakingly audited source before proceeding.

nokya 10y ago

Good news for politicians. Only 5% of the population actually understand how dangerous they are for civil liberties.

foota 10y ago

Interesting that Japan has both the highest level 3 percentage and the highest can't use computer percentage.

known 10y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Samurai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Samurai debates on it
unsignedint 10y ago
Not very surprising actually. They have good chunk of people who are heavily reliant on mobile devices and that predates smartphones. I have heard more than few cases where university professors commenting about student's lack of computer skill, to the extent that some of their student submit their essay using their phone.

nokya 10y ago

I see the argument of "not enough hours of practice" in some comments. I disagree. That would be true if there was a direct correlation between moderate proficiency in computers (e.g.: ability to independently reinstall your machine completely and diagnose which hardware component to replace after a failure). The unmentioned problem here is that people are actively reluctant (this is tested, too) to learn the skills that would let them be more independent. I doubt this is entirely related to the total amount of hours spent at a computer. In some way, computer literacy seems to be a similar scenario than cars: the homo simplex doesn't want to understand how it works, he/she just wants it to work while enjoying the luxury of not needing to understand it while posting duck faces on Instagram. Let's face it, computer illiterates understand less, pay more and end up having lower purchasing power. Considering that this is entirely under their control, I find this quite fair (I have different opinions about Seniors, but that's another discussion). To be honest, I can find only one valid reason for this to be an issue: civil liberties and human rights. I'm intimately and increasingly concerned by how much civil liberties have been taken from citizens in "developed" countries in the recent years, and I am under the impression that this is the direct effect of computer illiteracy spread across all levels of the population. Citizens are being asked to vote on laws relying on technological concepts they don't understand, and which end up in striping them from their rights. That's what computer illiteracy is about and that's what (I think) the article should talk about... :(

thesimpsons1022 10y ago
my father is a professor and has been asking my mom the same questions about microsoft word for the past 20 years, never learning it. he spends a lot of time on it too.
- k__ 10y ago
  I understand that some software really sucks. For exmple word processors, I really hate them with all my heart, but when getting a degree, I had to write much stuff. So I sat down and learned the core functions of Libre Office Writer and it made my life better. Even my profs. were amazed how good my papers looked. Not because they were really good, but because none of my fellow computer science students bothered to learn the software and make them look good.

Glyptodon 10y ago

I mildly interested in how the distributions break down by age cohort.

lacampbell 10y ago

This is fantastic news. I am glad to hear I am in the upper echelons and computing literacy - let alone programming literacy - has not caught on. My skillset would be useless if everyone could do it.

jmiserez 10y ago

I would have liked to see screenshots of the UIs they used, but they seem to be absent from the OECD report. A lot of the standard tasks we do with office/business software are unintuitive, but easily learned once someone shows you or you Google it. Even as a designer or developer, it's not always clear what each button does. >participants were asked to perform 14 computer-based tasks. Instead of using live websites, the participants attempted the tasks on simulated software on the test facilitator’s computer. This allowed the researchers to make sure that all participants were confronted with the same level of difficulty across the years and enabled controlled translations of the user interfaces into each country’s local language. Same with the language used in software: Sometimes tranlating UI buttons actually makes usability worse, because now you have to learn the shared language all over again. The descriptions on UI elements are often useless, unless you already know what the buttons do.

kagamine 10y ago
I've been telling my SO to "google it" for years. She won't do it unless I ask her to. Then when she does, I do this -> 0_o because, really, why are you typing that? Do you not know how to google? Anyway, all this misses the point. If you have to google how to use a GUI the software has failed at a fundamental level.

Stratoscope 10y ago

I think each of us computer experts should at least once in a while face a technical situation that completely befuddles us. Maybe this way we can get a sense of what it's like to be a normal "non-computer" person. I'm not talking about the challenge of learning a new programming language or framework. We know that will have its difficult spots. I don't even mean chasing down the trickiest bug. That's what we were born and trained to do! I mean something that you would think should be simple and obvious, but you're stuck, have no clue what to try next, and think the whole world must just be broken. This just happened to me. Night before last, my car's ESC (Electronic Stability Control) light came on. I thought I must have bumped the ESC disable button, but tapping it a few times did nothing. A little while later, the Check Engine light came on to keep the ESC light company. Uh-oh. I explained to my friend that it didn't mean we had to stop right now, unless that light started blinking. It didn't blink, and the engine sounded fine. Isn't it funny how a car has this one all-purpose light that could mean just about anything, and the car knows which of those many things it actually is, but it won't tell you? Unless you're a mechanic. Or unless you're smart, like me, and had an OBD-II device that comes with an app for your phone. Now I can just read the code myself! So I opened the app, tapped Connect, and there it was: Motorola Roadster 2. Um, that's my speakerphone. No OBD-II? I went to the website and read the manual for my OBD-II device and found my mistake: I needed to push the Bluetooth pairing button on the device before I could connect. So I pushed it, saw the blue light blinking, went back to the app and tapped Connect once more. No sign of the OBD-II device, just the speakerphone again! Something was really messed up and I had no idea what it was. I'd connected to the device before without any problem, but I'd also done a factory reset on the phone since then, so whatever it was wasn't working any more. Rebooting the phone didn't help, and turning the car ignition off and on a few times didn't either. I gave up for the night (and the next day). Finally today I got the courage to try again. First, of course, I tried all the things I tried before, thinking that maybe this time they would work. No such luck. Finally I got the idea of going to the Bluetooth menu on the phone to see if I could find the OBD-II device that way. You can guess the rest of the story: after I pushed the pairing button on the device, it showed up in the Bluetooth menu and I paired the phone with it like I'd done a long time ago before that factory reset. And then the OBD-II app connected and showed me the error: P0504 Brake Switch "A"/"B" Correlation I looked that up online and found the good news: indeed this was not an engine problem but a brake switch problem that also disables ESC. And the bad news: I'd been driving around with no brake lights and thought I had an engine problem instead. It was only sheer luck that I happened to think of checking the Bluetooth menu. When the OBD-II program showed me the list of available devices (only the Motorola speakerphone), it didn't say anything about what to do if my OBD-II device didn't show up in the list. And when I found their manual online it didn't offer any clue either. I was just supposed to "know" that I should go to the Bluetooth menu before trying to use the app. I still tend to think of myself as some kind of computer expert (in fact many of you have used code I wrote), but I'm grateful for this experience - it taught me to have a bit more sympathy when people get so frustrated with their computers and devices.

libeclipse 10y ago

>26% of adults were unable to use a computer What? This is really surprising. I expected some people to be really poor at using computers, but not being able to use them at all? Wow. TIL

sjf 10y ago
I didn't realise this until I heard that Hillary didn't know how to use a desktop computer and could only use a specific version of blackberry. Apparently it's still possible to be to totally functional without using technology.
- jodrellblank 10y ago
  Trump either: The New York Times reported on Nov. 6 that Trump “does not use a computer,” which explains why he was perplexed at his campaign spending millions of dollars on digital ads. - http://qz.com/829647/donald-trump-and-hillary-clinton-dont-know-how-to-use-computers/ http://qz.com/829647/donald-trump-and-hillary-clinton-dont-k... http://gizmodo.com/has-donald-trump-ever-used-a-computer-1762376695 http://gizmodo.com/has-donald-trump-ever-used-a-computer-176... http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2016/09/27/trump_knows_terrifyingly_little_about_computers.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2016/09/27/trump_kno...
  - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
    He probably doesn't drive or cook either. Is that perhaps as much a rich person thing as anything? I suspect he does most things by proxy?
    - sjf 10y ago
      I'm sure he _knows_ how to drive. Its getting to the point where not being able to use a computer has the same impact as not knowing how to read.
      - freehunter 10y ago

laurieg 10y ago

This reminds me of a UX lecture I attended in undergrad in the UK. The lecturer flashes up a picture and says "who is this?". There is a sea of blank faces as a reply. The picture was of Roy Chubby Brown [1] who by some measures was the most popular comedian in Britain at the time. Out of nearly 100 people no one had any idea. You are not average. Not even close.

Terr_ 10y ago
But how do you know the "average" person knows the most popular comedian in the first place? There's one day of the year which is the "most popular" birthday for a population, but that doesn't mean a huge percentage were born in it.
ZeroGravitas 10y ago
Random trivia: the fictional town in the cult TV series "The League of Gentlemen" is named after Roy Chubby Brown: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royston_Vasey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royston_Vasey

roel_v 10y ago

They should have included a category 'below 0': "User attempts to complete task by using the interface provided to him. Gives up in disgust after 15 minutes. Spends next 8 hours to (in this order) use common automation tools to reach his goals, write small scripts, reverse engineer the data and network formats, and disassemble the executable to inject his own hooks. After still failing to accomplish task, user tries to gradually replace parts of the provided software with his own versions; first using quick glue languages, eventually having to resort to rewrote large core parts in C just to have enough control of all components to make them interoperate. After 4 weeks of caffeine-fueled 16 hour days, user declares war on the vendor and starts writing his own version of the software and ecosystem to free humanity of the plague that is this god-forsaken piece of crapware. After 8 months of battling 30 years of legacy interoperability, data exchange formats and interfaces and the 8th question from Suzy in Admin about where the button that made the one thing with the blue border go away and then made the green other thing go bleep bleep has gone, user flees to off-grid cabin in the mountains with a beard below his collarbone and a crazed look in his eyes, while muttering 'they drew first blood. They drew first blood.' The end." (bonus upvote for the first person to recognize the movie reference)

deleted 10y ago
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jswny 10y ago
I don't know where this is from but it literally made me laugh out loud, so thank you.
- roel_v 10y ago
  It's [OC] so thank you - and I'm not ashamed to admit that during the first few hours after I posted it, it was up/downvoted a bit and it even got to -1 for some time; and that at that point I cried a tiny little tear inside, filled with essence of the programmer's existentialist anxiety...
hbk1966 10y ago
Sounds like a normal day. Rambo: First Blood reference also :)

Walkman 10y ago

There is a scene in Silicon Valley (the series) where Richard thinks the interface of the platform is really simple and intuitive, but turns out he only asked Level 3 people and above and it was not easy to use at the Level 1 people.

njharman 10y ago

Some if this has nothing to do with computers or interfaces. A lot of people couldn't do the find info across emails and schedule meeting whether the inputs and ouputs were paper, people, whatever. The problem is they lack ability, in shirt, to problem solve. Something we excel at we can't imagine being hard for others. Being able to discern what the problem is, wgat are the assets, what's the done condition, how to divide up and order problem, what steps to take, what order to take them. How to focus. Curiosity, ability to explore, trial and error. Just being able to formulate a test, determine result of test, and fathom whether the result is applicable to your task. Just so hard.

anotheryou 10y ago

I think the labels are quite harsh. Level 1 can be quite functioning for certain applications: - below level 1: can receive and reply to electronic communication (once told how) - level 1: can retrieve information from knowledge archives of all sorts. Can google alright. - level 2: can organize archives/folders/mail, can organize communications in a group, can find information in less obvious places and google quite well - level 3: has skills that go beyond what is currently needed in 90% of non IT-related jobs. Stunning though is the ~20% that can't do the simplest task. I wonder if they are capable of using an ATM.

swiley 10y ago

This actually sounds like a measure of reading comprehension and reasoning skills.

auganov 10y ago

I'd like to see the data for people below 25. It's unclear how much of that distribution is due to adoption lag.

speleding 10y ago
The same group did some research into that [1][2]. TLDR: there are differences in behaviour but error levels are similar and it makes no difference for the UI guidelines you should apply when designing. [1] https://www.nngroup.com/search/?q=age https://www.nngroup.com/search/?q=age [2] https://www.nngroup.com/articles/young-adults-ux/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/young-adults-ux/
trgn 10y ago
Kids are worse with computers than you'd think. Volunteer in a library for example and you'll be helping 16 year olds with printing double sided.
VLM 10y ago
All kids have been experts on computers for about three generations now. Its no longer a valid meme. There's kids now that don't know what VCR was, but you can assure them that their Grandpa was the only person in the household who could figure out how to program the timer.
- yoz-y 10y ago
  The idea that kids or young people are better with computers is not actually true. Yes they can use apps, some of them can install them, but for the most part they are clueless when it comes to actually fixing a problem with a computer. http://coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/ http://coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-comput...
  - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    In fact everybody who seems to be a 'computer expert' is probably comfortable at just one layer or two. Layers include running applications installing applications writing applications installing services and drivers writing services and drivers installing operating systems writing code for operating systems writing kernel code designing hardware designing chips designing chip technologies chemistry and physics

threatofrain 10y ago

I would like to think about the set of skills that don't revolve entirely around coincidental interfaces made by a few mega corporations. Are there computer skills more general than the ability to use iMessage or Windows Live Mail? Because if using iMessage means you now know how to chat, then what happens when NewChat(tm) comes out with a new brand experience? What happens when Microsoft goes Metro or Windows 10? As a society, should we be paying for user training for specific familiarity with proprietary interfaces? Shouldn't Microsoft or Apple be paying for this stuff? This is why I'm generally very suspicious of what people mean by "computer skills" in schools. They generally mean user training for Apple, Microsoft, or Google.

bryanrasmussen 10y ago
>Are there computer skills more general than the ability to >use iMessage or Windows Live Mail? wouldn't that be knowing how to program?
- theseatoms 10y ago
  Between those two ends of the spectrum lie abilities like being able to read and reason through operating system menus.
- wolfgke 10y ago
  >> I would like to think about the set of skills that don't revolve entirely around coincidental interfaces made by a few mega corporations. > wouldn't that be knowing how to program? Nearly all programming languages or instruction sets for assembly languages are also coincidental interfaces (this time for programming), often (though not always) at least originally designed by some "megacorp": - Assembly languages: typically the respective processor vendor - C: Bell Labs (AT&T) - C#: Microsoft - Go: Google - Java: Sun (now Oracle) - Javascript: Netscape - Objective-C: NeXT (now Apple) - R: A reimplementation of S (originally by Bell Labs; later commercially offered by TIBCO Software (another megacorp) under the name "S-PLUS"). - Swift: Apple So what I would consider as more general computer skills is rather the mathematical or the electrical engineering side of computing.

bkgunby 10y ago

I admit I still catch myself accidentally hitting the browser's back button on a multi-page Ajax form without its own back button. Or having to fill out a form again because, instead of opening a modal or a new tab, the current page changes (e.g., TOS). I've come across countless UX developers who don't consider these subtle details. And this is only a small part of nuances that a typical user faces. I don't care how beautiful or fancy your UX is. Familiarity is king in design, and if you stray too much away from the current experience, I won't hesitate to say that my toilet has better UX.

bagacrap 10y ago
Ajax can behave nicely with your browser's back button, but you're right that it's impossible to tell if it will before you try.

djb_hackernews 10y ago

This would have been surprising until a week ago when a friend of mine sent me this image of course offerings for those signing up for unemployment: https://imgur.com/gallery/tCG6J https://imgur.com/gallery/tCG6J Side note: If anyone is looking for an experienced technical sales person in Boston let me know! They have experience with startups, IPOs, large corporations, channel sales, and has the sales gift in a non sleazy way.

AdamSC1 10y ago

The report covers roughly 1 billion people if you take the working population of the 33 countries involved. At a sample of 215942 the margin of error is fractions of a percent. But, what this doesn't account for is that in the original report (http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/skills-matter_9789264258051-en http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/skills-matter_9789264...) you do see a significant variance in the distribution of skills based on: -Country -Age -Income Example: In Japan, only 4.3% of adults are at a "Level 1" where as in Indonesia it is 37.2% which is to be expected when Indonesia is the bottom of the ladder in GDP Per Capita (http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/education/skills-matter/per-capita-gdp-usd_9789264258051-graph7-en#page1 http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/educati...) and in literacy scores (http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/education/skills-matter/literacy-proficiency-by-educational-attainment_9789264258051-graph3-en#page3 http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/educati...). While this report says it takes the 'average cross the OECD countries' it's not clear on which factors were weighted or adjusted. The information isn't wrong - it's just worth taking it with a grain of salt depending on how you are using the information. That said the US market for example lines up very close to the average, which is still staggering.

gwbas1c 10y ago

I sometimes act like a "level 1" user when dealing with applications that I will only use once or twice. Why spend hours trying to re-learn how to do something very basic and simple? I have better things to do with my time, even though I might be capable of using a complicated application.

kelukelugames 10y ago

I worked at Redfin building tools for real estate agents and my ex was at Expedia doing tools for call center employees. Most of them don't even know about multiple tabs. We are in our little bubble about tech competency.

yoz-y 10y ago

What is with the needlessly complex description of tasks? > Tasks are based on well-defined problems involving the use of only one function within a generic interface to meet one explicit criterion without any categorical or inferential reasoning, or transforming of information. Few steps are required and no sub-goal has to be generated. It reminds me of times when I was writing articles for journals and had to find filler to reach the required arbitrary page count.

woogiewonka 10y ago
My thoughts exactly. As UX authority, you'd think they at least write clear descriptions.

jrapdx3 10y ago

This is a great topic and an informative article. As a probable exception to the rule, I'm an "older" individual with decent computer skills. No doubt it's attributable to managing and programming computers out of necessity since the IBM PC days. Having to learn everything the hard way has its merits. Related to the article I created and maintain a database application for an non-profit arts organization. It involves membership, artwork inventory and exhibitions. It's a fairly complex task, almost all the work goes into the web-based UI, while the PostgresQL backend/server is pretty straightforward. The challenging part is getting the artists and volunteers to actually use the DB program. The UI is as simple and unambiguous as I can make it. There's only so much to do to make a record with two dozen fields to fill in "simple". One method is using dropdown options to select from where that fits. Also avoiding hidden "tricks" the user would have to know, giving on-screen examples of proper field format (like date or time entries) and providing concise, specific, instructive error messages. Even with all that effort, convincing users to try it out has proven the biggest hurdle to success. I've come to realize a key to the tool's utility is constant encouragement. Live demos are often a useful way to help people "get over the hump" of fear and resistance. Ironically, the "power users" often show the greatest resistance to trying out the web app. While it's made to work as directly as possible, power users fear they will look "dumb" if they don't instantly grasp the operation of every feature. What I've learned (again) is it requires empathy for users' fears and sense of intimidation, and assuring the app is designed with "foolproof" safeguards preventing accidental disasters. Above all it takes enormous patience training users, listening to user feedback, answering questions and never, ever criticizing when people make mistakes.