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Have you, or whoever recommends that, ever talked to an actual non tech-savy person? I don't mean it like a "me as a non tech-savy person" role-playing, but to

by soco 5y ago

Have you, or whoever recommends that, ever talked to an actual non tech-savy person? I don't mean it like a "me as a non tech-savy person" role-playing, but to a real flesh and bone grandma.

axg11 5y ago
Yes, I'm basing this on experience. A non-savvy user sees most modern UIs as overwhelming, difficult to navigate and they don't have the same priors that the average HN reader does. When they see a chat pop-up, they see a familiar interface (SMS has been around for long enough) and it gives everyone literate the ability to describe in plain language what problem they are having.
faizshah 5y ago
My mom tries painfully hard to make Bixby do things for her. She will spend 20 minutes trying to get it to find her a recipe or something instead of using an app. I keep trying to tell her to stop wasting her time and just use google but I guess there is still some novelty in these conversational interfaces (clearly its not easier or faster). If she could use google home to fill out her time sheet or save a document to google drive she would. The thing she finds difficult about tech stuff is remembering the workflow of how to accomplish a task through multiple websites/apps. Also while I’m on my soap box this is a PSA to all ui devs, stop trying to turn every menu/button text into an icon. My mom does not even remember that the button with 3 horizontal lines means menu she is not going to understand that stamp icon means “add a signature.”
- alexpotato 5y ago
  I remember reading an interview with Bill Gates about how "two way mirror" user testing where devs watch REAL users interact with their application is both incredibly important and humbling at the same time. The above quote is from the days where people bought shrink wrapped software so it was incredibly hard to observe people using your application in the wild. Therefore, companies spent money to do it in house to get better data. Modern web applications, I would argue, make observing user behaviour in real time trivially easy but I'm sure lots of companies don't even bother. In turn, this brings us to the incredibly complicated interfaces we have today.

by soco 5y ago

Have you, or whoever recommends that, ever talked to an actual non tech-savy person? I don't mean it like a "me as a non tech-savy person" role-playing, but to a real flesh and bone grandma.

axg11 5y ago

Yes, I'm basing this on experience. A non-savvy user sees most modern UIs as overwhelming, difficult to navigate and they don't have the same priors that the average HN reader does. When they see a chat pop-up, they see a familiar interface (SMS has been around for long enough) and it gives everyone literate the ability to describe in plain language what problem they are having.

faizshah 5y ago

My mom tries painfully hard to make Bixby do things for her. She will spend 20 minutes trying to get it to find her a recipe or something instead of using an app. I keep trying to tell her to stop wasting her time and just use google but I guess there is still some novelty in these conversational interfaces (clearly its not easier or faster). If she could use google home to fill out her time sheet or save a document to google drive she would. The thing she finds difficult about tech stuff is remembering the workflow of how to accomplish a task through multiple websites/apps. Also while I’m on my soap box this is a PSA to all ui devs, stop trying to turn every menu/button text into an icon. My mom does not even remember that the button with 3 horizontal lines means menu she is not going to understand that stamp icon means “add a signature.”

alexpotato 5y ago
I remember reading an interview with Bill Gates about how "two way mirror" user testing where devs watch REAL users interact with their application is both incredibly important and humbling at the same time. The above quote is from the days where people bought shrink wrapped software so it was incredibly hard to observe people using your application in the wild. Therefore, companies spent money to do it in house to get better data. Modern web applications, I would argue, make observing user behaviour in real time trivially easy but I'm sure lots of companies don't even bother. In turn, this brings us to the incredibly complicated interfaces we have today.