5 ms·

Yeah, this is something I too struggle to understand. A kid new to it quickly gets the basics of an iPad. But a grandma struggles with it. Maybe all their preco

by grok22 5y ago

Yeah, this is something I too struggle to understand. A kid new to it quickly gets the basics of an iPad. But a grandma struggles with it. Maybe all their preconceived notions cause a mental barrier for some older folks in adopting new technology? Maybe it's just that people are variable in their adaptability and there probably will be kids too who find using an iPad really hard.

JadeNB 5y ago
I made a sister comment slightly after yours (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26983932 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26983932), but I think it's also worth noting that the two-year-old probably comes to the iPad with the idea of playing with it and seeing what happens. It's easy to make something happen on an iPad, and the two-year-old is delighted by most of the responses. By contrast, someone older but less experienced to technology comes to the iPad with a specific goal in mind. Unlike toddlers, whose whole mission in life is to form an image of what to them is a uniformly mysterious world, these are smart people who don't want to have to learn a whole new paradigm to do one thing. Not only can they not do the thing they want; worse, the motion and lights that accompany their attempts are not delighting to them as to the two-year-old, but somewhere between distracting and unpleasant.
nerdponx 5y ago
Maybe all their preconceived notions cause a mental barrier for some older folks in adopting new technology? I've observed this as well. The hardest part are the basic concepts. Examples: - The idea of a "settings menu" itself is somewhat of an alien concept and mostly limited to devices with screens. - Not all UI elements have obvious meanings if you aren't already used to them. - The input device itself might be unfamiliar (mouse, keyboard, touchscreen) and the user's brain might be busy trying to understand how to interact with the device at all, let alone do useful things with it. - Some users never learned the "why" or even the "what" of existing devices, only the "how" -- they don't understand concepts like "applications", they just follow very specific steps that someone laid out for accomplishing specific tasks. This makes it very difficult to discover functionality or adapt to a different UI, because they don't know what anything actually is in the first place.
- Leherenn 5y ago
  I don't know, a common issue I have seen is pointing the camera towards their face during a video call. These are people that have been taking pictures with regular cameras for decades, but give them a smartphone and they can't target their face to save their lives. They're not stupid, and I don't think it's a new concept, it's just digital instead of analogic. But a lot of older people struggle, I don't understand.
  - frereubu 5y ago
    A regular camera has one function - to take photos of what it's pointing at. Phone cameras are often hidden in the screen of a device that does a huge number of different things.

by grok22 5y ago

JadeNB 5y ago

I made a sister comment slightly after yours (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26983932 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26983932), but I think it's also worth noting that the two-year-old probably comes to the iPad with the idea of playing with it and seeing what happens. It's easy to make something happen on an iPad, and the two-year-old is delighted by most of the responses. By contrast, someone older but less experienced to technology comes to the iPad with a specific goal in mind. Unlike toddlers, whose whole mission in life is to form an image of what to them is a uniformly mysterious world, these are smart people who don't want to have to learn a whole new paradigm to do one thing. Not only can they not do the thing they want; worse, the motion and lights that accompany their attempts are not delighting to them as to the two-year-old, but somewhere between distracting and unpleasant.

nerdponx 5y ago

Maybe all their preconceived notions cause a mental barrier for some older folks in adopting new technology? I've observed this as well. The hardest part are the basic concepts. Examples: - The idea of a "settings menu" itself is somewhat of an alien concept and mostly limited to devices with screens. - Not all UI elements have obvious meanings if you aren't already used to them. - The input device itself might be unfamiliar (mouse, keyboard, touchscreen) and the user's brain might be busy trying to understand how to interact with the device at all, let alone do useful things with it. - Some users never learned the "why" or even the "what" of existing devices, only the "how" -- they don't understand concepts like "applications", they just follow very specific steps that someone laid out for accomplishing specific tasks. This makes it very difficult to discover functionality or adapt to a different UI, because they don't know what anything actually is in the first place.

Leherenn 5y ago
I don't know, a common issue I have seen is pointing the camera towards their face during a video call. These are people that have been taking pictures with regular cameras for decades, but give them a smartphone and they can't target their face to save their lives. They're not stupid, and I don't think it's a new concept, it's just digital instead of analogic. But a lot of older people struggle, I don't understand.
- frereubu 5y ago
  A regular camera has one function - to take photos of what it's pointing at. Phone cameras are often hidden in the screen of a device that does a huge number of different things.