8 ms·

This is a pretty fun submission. I like peering into the lives of computer users that don't have the level of computer literacy I'm used to day to day. It's a g

This is a pretty fun submission. I like peering into the lives of computer users that don't have the level of computer literacy I'm used to day to day. It's a good reminder. > This answer is not helpful. There is no start button. Because it's just a little windows icon now - easy to forget that that doesn't just make sense to some people. > Thank you, Brian- I would surely never have looked there, for anything, never mind notepad! It is on my start box now. Some people just haven't/won't learned the grammar and vocabulary of computer literacy. I think this person means "start menu?" But it looks like a box to them so that's how they described it. A while ago there was an article where a woman was trying to user testing in a mall and instead found an old guy who had literally never touched a computer. Reading that experience was fascinating.

Filligree 7y ago
> A while ago there was an article where a woman was trying to user testing in a mall and instead found an old guy who had literally never touched a computer. Reading that experience was fascinating. I missed that article. It sounds fascinating -- I don't suppose you have a link?
- er3s 7y ago
  This was absolutely fascinating... and underscores the fact that the world has little patience for the technically uninitiated. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2740038 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2740038
pradn 7y ago
The windows button looks more like a flag than a window, nothing to do with starting anything!
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- dTal 7y ago
  The "Start" button was never really about starting things in the first place. After all, clicking "Start" was the first step to shutting down your computer! Perfectly intuitive... Now it doesn't even say "Start" on it, and yet they persist in calling it the "Start menu".
  - blihp 7y ago
    I think the intent of the name was for the millions of new computer users at the time to think 'start here' when their computer booted up. And besides, if they didn't call it Start their Windows 95 ad blitz with Rolling Stones music would have made no sense at all! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chTftktWmto https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chTftktWmto)
    - baochan 7y ago
      If I remember correctly, the very first time you ran Windows 95 a little animated text box saying "<-- Click Here!" would fly across the taskbar to draw you to it. Coming from Windows 3.11 with Program Manager, it was initially a little confusing. Where was everything?
      - kaetemi 7y ago
        Yup, a little red airplane animation with a light yellow banner, on the taskbar, if I remember correctly. Didn't see it on all installations, though. Is it a specific version?
  - kyberias 7y ago
    Just because you could Shut down thru Start-menu doesn't mean it was not meant to start things. That definitely has always been it's purpose.
  - cesarb 7y ago
    > The "Start" button was never really about starting things in the first place. What did you find when you opened the Start menu (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d3/Windows_95_Start_menu.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d3/Windows_95_St...)? Programs (click on one to start the program), Documents (click to start a program handling the file), Settings (click to start a Control Panel applet), Find (click to start a find dialog), Help (click to start the help viewer), Run (click to start an executable by name), ... > After all, clicking "Start" was the first step to shutting down your computer! You are, after all, starting the shutdown procedure.
giancarlostoro 7y ago
> Because it's just a little windows icon now - easy to forget that that doesn't just make sense to some people. Not only this, but the icon style is different from when they last looked at it just different enough to probably confuse them.
ilkan 7y ago
I was troubleshooting WhatsApp over the phone for a relative work different hardware... Took me a bit of time to realize "solid triangle-ish" was wifi and "cup" was microphone. But for the Gen-Z and after, how would you intuitively represent Save and Call to people who've never seen a floppy disk or a phone handset?
- antod 7y ago
  Floppy disk, sure. But phone handset? Old movies and TV shows set in the past will keep that image alive like it did for us with knowing what phones looked like before our time. Unless you think movies/TV will go away too...
  - usrusr 7y ago
    I agree that outdated symbols won't be a problem for younger generations, but for different reasons. The "save" icon has long stopped being a floppy disk. It may still look like one (to those who know the object depicted), but it is identified as just "save" and nothing more. If people would identify it with portable media instead of the act of storing the current document, they would also try to use it for loading a document. Nobody does that. Old entertainment content however, I'm afraid that it might be pretty much lost to those growing up with on demand streaming. In the age of linear TV, back catalog content wasn't just available to consume in lieu of something new, it was actively fed to us by the fixed schedule on failure to tune in when the new stuff was aired. This introduced us to a lot of content from before our time. But with streaming, I just don't see how it would happen, not in culturally relevant volume. Nostalgia is an acquired taste. Just like so many of my generation I madly binged Friends when it appeared on Netflix, but how many streamed Friends who completely missed it's original run?
    - snakeboy 7y ago
      > but how many streamed Friends who completely missed it's original run? 23 year old here. I had never seen Friends, thus I never had any nostalgic interest in visiting it. One weekend last year I had an onsite interview in Denver just before a blizzard hit, snowing me into a Motel 6 for 2 days. No wifi, so I did nothing but watch Friends and Seinfeld reruns on the TV. Probably the first time I'd used a television in my adult life. I also caught Forrest Gump for the first time late that night. Not a bad film.
usrusr 7y ago
"A while ago there was an article where a woman was trying to user testing in a mall and instead found an old guy who had literally never touched a computer." I believe that this approach to UX testing is to blame for some of the most infuriating UI changes: when you design UI experiments with actual users you do that because you want objectivity. And what could be more objective than selecting "perfect blanks" as you test subjects? The problem with this approach is that everything you gain in objectivity is lost many times over in relevancy. Those people are not representative of your actual users, not even when you are building a geriatry self-serve kiosk. Unfortunately, once that kind of experiment has taken place, it inevitably dominates all other concerns. Every critical voice will reliably get shouted down with "We have the numbers to prove it. We did science, you didn't. You are just a grumpy old power-user disrespecting the needs of the weak".
- pmontra 7y ago
  I agree. That old guy is not a computer user, so there is no need to build a UI for him. To further this point, imagine testing HN with people that can't read. Do we rebuild it for children under 6 or do we wait they learn to read and grow to an age that let them make sense of the contents of the site? And a car analogy/tale. If you drive different models of different makers you find many little differences and unobvius ways to operate some controls. I remember I had to read the manual of a rental car 25 years ago to figure how to reverse. I had to lift a ring on the stick and I never saw something like that in my life as a passenger or as a driver before (and I barely saw automatic gears by then.) That was not very discoverable. However one shouldn't bother to design car controls for elderly people like my mother. She never got a driving license, she'll never will and yet she had no problems living their life. Not everybody needs computers.
- nitrogen 7y ago
  "We have the numbers to prove it. We did science, you didn't. You are just a grumpy old power-user disrespecting the needs of the weak". Well put. What's the counterargument? There has to be a way to solve this problem.
Doubl 7y ago
I remember being called by someone to whom we'd sent a trial installation CD, this was in the days before remote desktop software. They didn't know how to insert a CD and were defensive with it Why can't you make it easy for normal people?
- tigershark 7y ago
  Probably because they didn’t have a cd-rom unit and they were trying to push it in the 3 1/2” disk drive. If they had a real floppy disk drive (5 1/4”) they probably would have succeeded, but I seriously doubt that the installation would have gone through smoothly...
  - Doubl 7y ago
    Lol!
nickjj 7y ago
> I like peering into the lives of computer users that don't have the level of computer literacy I'm used to day to day. It's a good reminder. Yep and sometimes it happens in unexpected places. I just went to the dentist the other day. The receptionist accidentally moved her task bar to be oriented vertically on the left and couldn't get it back to the horizontal bottom position. We're on very friendly terms so she asked if I could show her how to fix it which involved going around the desk. Naturally I requested she hides any windows that might violate HIPAA compliance before I swung around. It was interesting to see her facial expressions and "whoa!" reactions when I mentioned how you can left click and drag the task bar to different spots and how to prevent this from happening in the future by right clicking and locking the task bar. What was really interesting to me was when I said right click on the mouse, her eyes immediately looked at my hand on the mouse so you can't take left and right clicking as granted knowledge that everyone has as muscle memory. This is someone who has been using that computer for years to manage appointments and whatever else, but things like right clicking the task bar is a move that very few people do out in the wild unless they are approaching enthusiast levels. She's not out of the loop with tech either. She has a smartphone and does a lot of things with it.
- sneak 7y ago
  The only problem with that is that Sharif don’t like it.
  - LeoPanthera 7y ago
    OK I know it's off topic but I can't resist. https://youtu.be/WEWG6kSYqlY https://youtu.be/WEWG6kSYqlY
- Noumenon72 7y ago
  Yes, when I volunteered to help senior citizens with computers right click was something none of them knew they could do, nor could they remember it from week to week. Phones and web sites are much easier.
  - Terretta 7y ago
Paraesthetic 7y ago
There is a Windows button on their keyboard?
m0zg 7y ago
If you've never seen user testing where users try to use your software, it's one of the most eye opening experiences a software engineer could have. I've seen a number of these tests at MS in early 00's when I worked there. It's as though the people using your software are from another planet, with a completely different set of rules in their head as to how programs should be used. This kind of exposure tends to generate a lot of empathy towards the user, as well as to the demands of the designers and user experience specialists. It also helps engender the right kind of intuition as to the level of UX complexity and cognitive load non-engineer users are prepared to tolerate. And that level is very, very low indeed.
Razengan 7y ago
> Some people just haven't/won't learned the grammar and vocabulary of computer literacy. Techie snobs scoff at the iPad but without its simplicity some of the older people in my family would have never used a computing device. It wasn't something they ever needed – having done without computers for so long just fine – but it did bring them joy and entertainment and even helped them with some tasks, like notes and contacts. And yes, abstracting away the file system played a big role in the iPad's accessibility. Just vanishing the keyboard and mouse alone greatly lowers the intimidating barriers for some tech-averse people.

Filligree 7y ago

> A while ago there was an article where a woman was trying to user testing in a mall and instead found an old guy who had literally never touched a computer. Reading that experience was fascinating. I missed that article. It sounds fascinating -- I don't suppose you have a link?

er3s 7y ago
This was absolutely fascinating... and underscores the fact that the world has little patience for the technically uninitiated. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2740038 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2740038

pradn 7y ago

The windows button looks more like a flag than a window, nothing to do with starting anything!

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
dTal 7y ago
The "Start" button was never really about starting things in the first place. After all, clicking "Start" was the first step to shutting down your computer! Perfectly intuitive... Now it doesn't even say "Start" on it, and yet they persist in calling it the "Start menu".
- blihp 7y ago
  I think the intent of the name was for the millions of new computer users at the time to think 'start here' when their computer booted up. And besides, if they didn't call it Start their Windows 95 ad blitz with Rolling Stones music would have made no sense at all! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chTftktWmto https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chTftktWmto)
  - baochan 7y ago
    If I remember correctly, the very first time you ran Windows 95 a little animated text box saying "<-- Click Here!" would fly across the taskbar to draw you to it. Coming from Windows 3.11 with Program Manager, it was initially a little confusing. Where was everything?
    - kaetemi 7y ago
      Yup, a little red airplane animation with a light yellow banner, on the taskbar, if I remember correctly. Didn't see it on all installations, though. Is it a specific version?
- kyberias 7y ago
  Just because you could Shut down thru Start-menu doesn't mean it was not meant to start things. That definitely has always been it's purpose.
- cesarb 7y ago
  > The "Start" button was never really about starting things in the first place. What did you find when you opened the Start menu (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d3/Windows_95_Start_menu.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d3/Windows_95_St...)? Programs (click on one to start the program), Documents (click to start a program handling the file), Settings (click to start a Control Panel applet), Find (click to start a find dialog), Help (click to start the help viewer), Run (click to start an executable by name), ... > After all, clicking "Start" was the first step to shutting down your computer! You are, after all, starting the shutdown procedure.

giancarlostoro 7y ago

> Because it's just a little windows icon now - easy to forget that that doesn't just make sense to some people. Not only this, but the icon style is different from when they last looked at it just different enough to probably confuse them.

ilkan 7y ago

I was troubleshooting WhatsApp over the phone for a relative work different hardware... Took me a bit of time to realize "solid triangle-ish" was wifi and "cup" was microphone. But for the Gen-Z and after, how would you intuitively represent Save and Call to people who've never seen a floppy disk or a phone handset?

antod 7y ago
Floppy disk, sure. But phone handset? Old movies and TV shows set in the past will keep that image alive like it did for us with knowing what phones looked like before our time. Unless you think movies/TV will go away too...
- usrusr 7y ago
  I agree that outdated symbols won't be a problem for younger generations, but for different reasons. The "save" icon has long stopped being a floppy disk. It may still look like one (to those who know the object depicted), but it is identified as just "save" and nothing more. If people would identify it with portable media instead of the act of storing the current document, they would also try to use it for loading a document. Nobody does that. Old entertainment content however, I'm afraid that it might be pretty much lost to those growing up with on demand streaming. In the age of linear TV, back catalog content wasn't just available to consume in lieu of something new, it was actively fed to us by the fixed schedule on failure to tune in when the new stuff was aired. This introduced us to a lot of content from before our time. But with streaming, I just don't see how it would happen, not in culturally relevant volume. Nostalgia is an acquired taste. Just like so many of my generation I madly binged Friends when it appeared on Netflix, but how many streamed Friends who completely missed it's original run?
  - snakeboy 7y ago
    > but how many streamed Friends who completely missed it's original run? 23 year old here. I had never seen Friends, thus I never had any nostalgic interest in visiting it. One weekend last year I had an onsite interview in Denver just before a blizzard hit, snowing me into a Motel 6 for 2 days. No wifi, so I did nothing but watch Friends and Seinfeld reruns on the TV. Probably the first time I'd used a television in my adult life. I also caught Forrest Gump for the first time late that night. Not a bad film.

usrusr 7y ago

"A while ago there was an article where a woman was trying to user testing in a mall and instead found an old guy who had literally never touched a computer." I believe that this approach to UX testing is to blame for some of the most infuriating UI changes: when you design UI experiments with actual users you do that because you want objectivity. And what could be more objective than selecting "perfect blanks" as you test subjects? The problem with this approach is that everything you gain in objectivity is lost many times over in relevancy. Those people are not representative of your actual users, not even when you are building a geriatry self-serve kiosk. Unfortunately, once that kind of experiment has taken place, it inevitably dominates all other concerns. Every critical voice will reliably get shouted down with "We have the numbers to prove it. We did science, you didn't. You are just a grumpy old power-user disrespecting the needs of the weak".

pmontra 7y ago
I agree. That old guy is not a computer user, so there is no need to build a UI for him. To further this point, imagine testing HN with people that can't read. Do we rebuild it for children under 6 or do we wait they learn to read and grow to an age that let them make sense of the contents of the site? And a car analogy/tale. If you drive different models of different makers you find many little differences and unobvius ways to operate some controls. I remember I had to read the manual of a rental car 25 years ago to figure how to reverse. I had to lift a ring on the stick and I never saw something like that in my life as a passenger or as a driver before (and I barely saw automatic gears by then.) That was not very discoverable. However one shouldn't bother to design car controls for elderly people like my mother. She never got a driving license, she'll never will and yet she had no problems living their life. Not everybody needs computers.
nitrogen 7y ago
"We have the numbers to prove it. We did science, you didn't. You are just a grumpy old power-user disrespecting the needs of the weak". Well put. What's the counterargument? There has to be a way to solve this problem.

Doubl 7y ago

I remember being called by someone to whom we'd sent a trial installation CD, this was in the days before remote desktop software. They didn't know how to insert a CD and were defensive with it Why can't you make it easy for normal people?

tigershark 7y ago
Probably because they didn’t have a cd-rom unit and they were trying to push it in the 3 1/2” disk drive. If they had a real floppy disk drive (5 1/4”) they probably would have succeeded, but I seriously doubt that the installation would have gone through smoothly...
- Doubl 7y ago
  Lol!

nickjj 7y ago

> I like peering into the lives of computer users that don't have the level of computer literacy I'm used to day to day. It's a good reminder. Yep and sometimes it happens in unexpected places. I just went to the dentist the other day. The receptionist accidentally moved her task bar to be oriented vertically on the left and couldn't get it back to the horizontal bottom position. We're on very friendly terms so she asked if I could show her how to fix it which involved going around the desk. Naturally I requested she hides any windows that might violate HIPAA compliance before I swung around. It was interesting to see her facial expressions and "whoa!" reactions when I mentioned how you can left click and drag the task bar to different spots and how to prevent this from happening in the future by right clicking and locking the task bar. What was really interesting to me was when I said right click on the mouse, her eyes immediately looked at my hand on the mouse so you can't take left and right clicking as granted knowledge that everyone has as muscle memory. This is someone who has been using that computer for years to manage appointments and whatever else, but things like right clicking the task bar is a move that very few people do out in the wild unless they are approaching enthusiast levels. She's not out of the loop with tech either. She has a smartphone and does a lot of things with it.

sneak 7y ago
The only problem with that is that Sharif don’t like it.
- LeoPanthera 7y ago
  OK I know it's off topic but I can't resist. https://youtu.be/WEWG6kSYqlY https://youtu.be/WEWG6kSYqlY
Noumenon72 7y ago
Yes, when I volunteered to help senior citizens with computers right click was something none of them knew they could do, nor could they remember it from week to week. Phones and web sites are much easier.
- Terretta 7y ago

Paraesthetic 7y ago

There is a Windows button on their keyboard?

m0zg 7y ago

If you've never seen user testing where users try to use your software, it's one of the most eye opening experiences a software engineer could have. I've seen a number of these tests at MS in early 00's when I worked there. It's as though the people using your software are from another planet, with a completely different set of rules in their head as to how programs should be used. This kind of exposure tends to generate a lot of empathy towards the user, as well as to the demands of the designers and user experience specialists. It also helps engender the right kind of intuition as to the level of UX complexity and cognitive load non-engineer users are prepared to tolerate. And that level is very, very low indeed.

Razengan 7y ago

> Some people just haven't/won't learned the grammar and vocabulary of computer literacy. Techie snobs scoff at the iPad but without its simplicity some of the older people in my family would have never used a computing device. It wasn't something they ever needed – having done without computers for so long just fine – but it did bring them joy and entertainment and even helped them with some tasks, like notes and contacts. And yes, abstracting away the file system played a big role in the iPad's accessibility. Just vanishing the keyboard and mouse alone greatly lowers the intimidating barriers for some tech-averse people.