This. Also, equally important is the usability of the hardware. E.g. compared to the dot-matrix printers of 90s, it is far easier to feed paper to Laser printer

This. Also, equally important is the usability of the hardware. E.g. compared to the dot-matrix printers of 90s, it is far easier to feed paper to Laser printers. Children normally find it easier to adapt to new things. E.g. "Hole in the Wall" experiments: http://www.greenstar.org/butterflies/Hole-in-the-Wall.htm http://www.greenstar.org/butterflies/Hole-in-the-Wall.htm Not sure, if this is slightly off-topic, but sometimes users ask pretty interesting questions. Circa, 1997 I visited a computer training institute to meet one of my friends who was a Lab Technician. There was a batch of interesting people: only one of them would sit in front of a desktop and all 38 would line up around him, despite terminals being available for all of them. Now, this guy is trying to type "dir /s" and while hitting the Spacebar a question pops in his mind: "Why do you need to hit the Spacebar with thumb?" I started thinking about how it is more efficient to hit the Spacebar with thumb, the notion of finger travel in miles per annum etc., while my friend replied curtly to that 55 year old student: "Sir, do you start your Scooter by hitting the `kick' by foot or by palm?" He gulped the tobacco he was chewing up. During that year, I rolled out a desktop application in a smallish organization and was astonished to meet users who were typists-turned-computer-operators. I couldn't grasp as to why they found my code to be so user-friendly. Turned out that a key decision in the beginning of the project helped me: all labels in the application were in Marathi. Re: parent's post, in the case of ATM machine, if they keep a microphone disguised in the form of telephone handset connected to the machine itself, driven by an AI program (without the press 1 for foo, press 2 for bar type of idiocy) might be of great help.