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> But the average technically illiterate user has even shallower mental models for their computer than for their car, and is disinclined to attempt any amount o

> But the average technically illiterate user has even shallower mental models for their computer than for their car, and is disinclined to attempt any amount of diagnosis. When have you truly encountered this? If you read through the article, the behavior the guy complains about is actually users going through the process of building a mental model of what their computer does. E.g. the woman from the article expects PowerPoint presentations to just work despite Internet video being blocked, because she has a (correct) mental model that PowerPoint presentations should be local. This is what I would expect from someone who was trying to understand their computer and has made an honest attempt at diagnosis. I've dealt with a lot of relatively computer illiterate users, including friends and family, and I can count on my fingers the number of times I've felt someone was being willfully ignorant. 95% of the time, people are making an honest effort to learn, and bashing them for not knowing everything yet is a very unfair reaction.

wtallis 10y ago
> "E.g. the woman from the article expects PowerPoint presentations to just work despite Internet video being blocked, because she has a (correct) mental model that PowerPoint presentations should be local. This is what I would expect from someone who was trying to understand their computer and has made an honest attempt at diagnosis." The PowerPoint embedded video issue in specific is a case of not understanding the difference between a link/reference and the object itself. That class of misunderstanding occurs all over the place and PowerPoint's UI probably wasn't helping the situation, but it's still an extremely basic thing to be confused about. The user certainly did not have a correct understanding of what PowerPoint was up to; she was expecting PowerPoint to conform to her vague wishes, rather than deriving her expectations from any technical reality. And taken as a whole, the anecdote shows a user that immediately gave up in the face of both simple and hard problems, was unwilling to help in the diagnosis process, and arrogantly rejected the author's attempts to educate the user. This wasn't a user that was trying to learn or understand, this was a user that had clearly decided not to learn anything more and was trying to outsource all further need for technical knowledge.
- smallnamespace 10y ago
  We're conflating two different things, which is the user's attitude toward the author, vs. the user's attitude towards learning the tech itself. Given that the author showed sarcasm and hostility towards anyone perceived to be less technically literate from the very start, I wouldn't be surprised at the user's reaction, although I agree she should show some level of appreciation for what is essentially unpaid IT work. > extremely basic thing to be confused about No, the confusion is that PowerPoint even allows links and references, rather than directly embedding the content. You're expecting the user to be familiar with PowerPoint's feature set, and in my experience the linking/referencing feature is used rarely. It doesn't help that the software purposefully hides the fact that it's a reference in order to make the experience more seamless.
  - wtallis 10y ago
    > "Given that the author showed sarcasm and hostility towards anyone perceived to be less technically literate from the very start," The author mentions that his usual tactic is sarcasm, but that during this encounter he was polite. > "You're expecting the user to be familiar with PowerPoint's feature set, and in my experience the linking/referencing feature is used rarely." The user has just been told that PowerPoint was trying to stream the video. At this point, she no longer needs specific prior knowledge that PowerPoint has a linking/referencing feature. She has been presented with enough information to infer that the feature exists, if she has enough technical knowledge to recognize the general concept of a link. But instead of rethinking her situation, she patronizingly rejects the author's explanation—the first occasion in the encounter where she engaged in any discussion of the technical details.
    - smallnamespace 10y ago
      Again, we have only the author's account for the interaction, and he sounds like he's got a big chip on his shoulder. I wouldn't be surprised if his attitude his coloring his interpretation. Even if this particular user was being willfully ignorant, it's not been my experience with many, many other tech 'illiterate' people, who I've found by and large ask good questions and listen to explanations. I think computer-literate people really forget how much background knowledge they've absorbed over the years and how it helps them learn more. Existing knowledge helps acquire more knowledge, and the effect compounds over time. For example, a lot of posts here seem to be saying 'just Google it', but even knowing what terms to Google for is confusing for someone who doesn't have a knowledge base, because they don't even know what search terms to Google for, and which sources to trust. For example, here's the first link you hit if you search 'remove viruses from computer': http://www.pcworld.com/article/243818/security/how-to-remove-malware-from-your-windows-pc.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/243818/security/how-to-remove... Among other things, it recommends installing third-party AVX and random 'malware scanners'. Given how poor antivirus software is, following this advice will often slow down the computer and causes other problems down the line. For someone who really doesn't know what they're doing, and knows that they don't know, another barrier to trying to learn is simple risk aversion. I'm hesitant to work on my own car because I know that I'm ignorant, to the point that I don't have a clear idea of what the failure modes are and the cost to me to fix them if I screw up. Similarly, if a computer user really has no clue what they're doing and they know that they're ignorant, they might perceive the process of experimenting and learning as potentially very costly -- maybe they can lose all their files, or bork their computer for a week, etc. There's also a second-order effect here -- some people are just not that quick at picking up new things, and they know that they're bad at it. I bet most software engineers are in the top 5% of the population in being able to teach themselves new things and learning them quickly. Unwillingness to learn a new task or fact can be rational if you have strong reasons to suspect that the cost of learning more is high.

wtallis 10y ago

> "E.g. the woman from the article expects PowerPoint presentations to just work despite Internet video being blocked, because she has a (correct) mental model that PowerPoint presentations should be local. This is what I would expect from someone who was trying to understand their computer and has made an honest attempt at diagnosis." The PowerPoint embedded video issue in specific is a case of not understanding the difference between a link/reference and the object itself. That class of misunderstanding occurs all over the place and PowerPoint's UI probably wasn't helping the situation, but it's still an extremely basic thing to be confused about. The user certainly did not have a correct understanding of what PowerPoint was up to; she was expecting PowerPoint to conform to her vague wishes, rather than deriving her expectations from any technical reality. And taken as a whole, the anecdote shows a user that immediately gave up in the face of both simple and hard problems, was unwilling to help in the diagnosis process, and arrogantly rejected the author's attempts to educate the user. This wasn't a user that was trying to learn or understand, this was a user that had clearly decided not to learn anything more and was trying to outsource all further need for technical knowledge.

smallnamespace 10y ago
We're conflating two different things, which is the user's attitude toward the author, vs. the user's attitude towards learning the tech itself. Given that the author showed sarcasm and hostility towards anyone perceived to be less technically literate from the very start, I wouldn't be surprised at the user's reaction, although I agree she should show some level of appreciation for what is essentially unpaid IT work. > extremely basic thing to be confused about No, the confusion is that PowerPoint even allows links and references, rather than directly embedding the content. You're expecting the user to be familiar with PowerPoint's feature set, and in my experience the linking/referencing feature is used rarely. It doesn't help that the software purposefully hides the fact that it's a reference in order to make the experience more seamless.
- wtallis 10y ago
  > "Given that the author showed sarcasm and hostility towards anyone perceived to be less technically literate from the very start," The author mentions that his usual tactic is sarcasm, but that during this encounter he was polite. > "You're expecting the user to be familiar with PowerPoint's feature set, and in my experience the linking/referencing feature is used rarely." The user has just been told that PowerPoint was trying to stream the video. At this point, she no longer needs specific prior knowledge that PowerPoint has a linking/referencing feature. She has been presented with enough information to infer that the feature exists, if she has enough technical knowledge to recognize the general concept of a link. But instead of rethinking her situation, she patronizingly rejects the author's explanation—the first occasion in the encounter where she engaged in any discussion of the technical details.
  - smallnamespace 10y ago
    Again, we have only the author's account for the interaction, and he sounds like he's got a big chip on his shoulder. I wouldn't be surprised if his attitude his coloring his interpretation. Even if this particular user was being willfully ignorant, it's not been my experience with many, many other tech 'illiterate' people, who I've found by and large ask good questions and listen to explanations. I think computer-literate people really forget how much background knowledge they've absorbed over the years and how it helps them learn more. Existing knowledge helps acquire more knowledge, and the effect compounds over time. For example, a lot of posts here seem to be saying 'just Google it', but even knowing what terms to Google for is confusing for someone who doesn't have a knowledge base, because they don't even know what search terms to Google for, and which sources to trust. For example, here's the first link you hit if you search 'remove viruses from computer': http://www.pcworld.com/article/243818/security/how-to-remove-malware-from-your-windows-pc.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/243818/security/how-to-remove... Among other things, it recommends installing third-party AVX and random 'malware scanners'. Given how poor antivirus software is, following this advice will often slow down the computer and causes other problems down the line. For someone who really doesn't know what they're doing, and knows that they don't know, another barrier to trying to learn is simple risk aversion. I'm hesitant to work on my own car because I know that I'm ignorant, to the point that I don't have a clear idea of what the failure modes are and the cost to me to fix them if I screw up. Similarly, if a computer user really has no clue what they're doing and they know that they're ignorant, they might perceive the process of experimenting and learning as potentially very costly -- maybe they can lose all their files, or bork their computer for a week, etc. There's also a second-order effect here -- some people are just not that quick at picking up new things, and they know that they're bad at it. I bet most software engineers are in the top 5% of the population in being able to teach themselves new things and learning them quickly. Unwillingness to learn a new task or fact can be rational if you have strong reasons to suspect that the cost of learning more is high.