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Let me recount an experience I heard second hand of a researcher developing user interfaces for research tools. Keep in mind the target audiences are people wit

by qmmmur 7y ago

Let me recount an experience I heard second hand of a researcher developing user interfaces for research tools. Keep in mind the target audiences are people with PhD's and who have to comb through lots of data in order to do their job. They struggled with _double click_ as a concept. How fast, not moving the mouse in-between clicks etc, etc. Some people are really virginial when it comes to anything other than doing things the slowest way possible on a computer.

brianwawok 7y ago
I know people who have been web developers for a decade, that double click hyperlinks. If something works when you do it... you just get a habit of it.
nickpeterson 7y ago
That's a great point. I think technical users underestimate how much of what they 'understand' is really intuition from years of struggling through computers.
ksec 7y ago
I would have thought Double Click was something "Death would take care of it" [1] by now, so may be not. I remember twenty years ago teaching my parents double click, they then spend years on computer and they still cant understand it. They have 4 modes in their mental model, Left Click, Right Click, and Double Click on both Left and Right. They dont understand when to use which. A lot of nerds / geeks/ tech people to this day still dont understand what makes the whole touch screen / iPhone UX so special. Scott Forstall said it [2] these people just dont get it. The single tap app opening may have been trivial for most of us, it was a world of difference to 95% of consumers. ( And that is why you should not put these people into consumer tech product design ) [1] Something Steve Jobs said with regards to people dont know how to use a keyboard, but I cant find the video with Google. It was during an interview with Walt Mossberg. [2]https://youtu.be/IiuVggWNqSA?t=3102 https://youtu.be/IiuVggWNqSA?t=3102
- throw0101a 7y ago
  > I would have thought Double Click was something "Death would take care of it" [1] by now, so may be not. Wasn't this one of the reasons why Solitaire was included with Windows 3: to teach people about using a mouse?
- downtide 7y ago
  Double clicking is dreadful. So horrible to learn.
dlivingston 7y ago
Indeed. When I was in high school, I took a community college course called "Intro to Computers" or something like that. We spent an entire lecture on the concept of right-clicking, and several lectures on changing fonts and font sizes in Microsoft Word. It blew my mind that this was not innately intuitive, forgetting that I grew up with all of this and it's as second nature my generation as breathing.

by qmmmur 7y ago

brianwawok 7y ago

I know people who have been web developers for a decade, that double click hyperlinks. If something works when you do it... you just get a habit of it.

nickpeterson 7y ago

That's a great point. I think technical users underestimate how much of what they 'understand' is really intuition from years of struggling through computers.

ksec 7y ago

I would have thought Double Click was something "Death would take care of it" [1] by now, so may be not. I remember twenty years ago teaching my parents double click, they then spend years on computer and they still cant understand it. They have 4 modes in their mental model, Left Click, Right Click, and Double Click on both Left and Right. They dont understand when to use which. A lot of nerds / geeks/ tech people to this day still dont understand what makes the whole touch screen / iPhone UX so special. Scott Forstall said it [2] these people just dont get it. The single tap app opening may have been trivial for most of us, it was a world of difference to 95% of consumers. ( And that is why you should not put these people into consumer tech product design ) [1] Something Steve Jobs said with regards to people dont know how to use a keyboard, but I cant find the video with Google. It was during an interview with Walt Mossberg. [2]https://youtu.be/IiuVggWNqSA?t=3102 https://youtu.be/IiuVggWNqSA?t=3102

throw0101a 7y ago
> I would have thought Double Click was something "Death would take care of it" [1] by now, so may be not. Wasn't this one of the reasons why Solitaire was included with Windows 3: to teach people about using a mouse?
downtide 7y ago
Double clicking is dreadful. So horrible to learn.

dlivingston 7y ago

Indeed. When I was in high school, I took a community college course called "Intro to Computers" or something like that. We spent an entire lecture on the concept of right-clicking, and several lectures on changing fonts and font sizes in Microsoft Word. It blew my mind that this was not innately intuitive, forgetting that I grew up with all of this and it's as second nature my generation as breathing.