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> The speed at which they traversed the phone menus was the same as for literate people. We often had to ask our interviewees to slow down when t
by newsbinator 5y ago
> The speed at which they traversed the phone menus was the same as for literate people. We often had to ask our interviewees to slow down when they were showing us how they performed certain tasks on their phones. They mastered important functionality through rote learning: “After I have clicked on this icon I need to go down twice and then – click! - I’m done.” This was the same technique that they used to learn how to operate other important digital interfaces such as ATMs and game consoles. Family or friends assisted during the memorization phase and they repeated the procedures in their presence as many times as needed.
- lotyrin 5y agoThis reminds me of a certain facet of computer literacy: exploration. There are users who will only seek out menu items in software if they already know they are there and where, compared to users who will seek out the items they are looking for and can imagine that they probably do exist somewhere. It's unimaginable to the latter user that one would possibly have to "learn" how to use Google Docs having only ever been exposed to MS Word, while the former is completely lost because the menus have to be re-learned and all the possibilities available to them must be re-memorized.
- imoverclocked 5y agoBeautifully put. I've experienced this dichotomy so many times in many different contexts. Being literate and being able to explore are extremely empowering gifts.
- hughrr 5y agoI was a contractor once and was basically used as a scapegoat after being asked to move some UI bits for the sake of consistency. This was moving the OK and Cancel buttons on every single dialog window so they were in the same consistent place. The customers shit the bed and the change rolled back and an “unspecified contractor” was blamed for “an unauthorised change”. I chose not to renew that one.
- BitwiseFool 5y agoThey should have done them one at a time. You can reasonably gaslight the client that way. I sometimes forget whether or not OK should be on the left or right of Cancel.
- bcraven 5y agohttps://help.duo.com/s/article/7231?language=en_US https://help.duo.com/s/article/7231?language=en_US The Duo authentication app recently swapped the 'Accept' and 'Deny' buttons and it was unbelievably frustrating.
- _dain_ 5y agoIt's amazing that I use computers all the time and I can't remember what the standard placement of OK/Cancel is, offhand. It's like how nobody can remember which way the Queen faces on a coin.
- ralfd 5y agoActually that is easy to remember, because OK/Cancel is the wrong Windows way and Cancel/VerbOfAction the enlightened Apple way. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17269938 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17269938 > Windows puts OK first Apple puts OK last Gnome, iOS and Android followed Apples style, which influences Web Apps.
- code_duck 5y agoThat makes me think of how many times I've had to ask people "what does the error message on the screen say?" or tell my parents "the words that it says on the screen - read them, the program/website is trying to tell you something". When it comes to software many users are functionally illiterate because they don't even try to read alert windows or error messages, assuming that they will be meaningless.
- ehutch79 5y agoTHIS. So much this.
- svachalek 5y agoYup, I've seen this a lot. This type of user basically operates like a script, they move through a memorized list of steps and when they can't go forward they simply throw an exception.
- tn1 5y agonot even really an exception, they're more a like a PHP script that just ignores errors and continues
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago> they don't even try to read alert windows or error messages, assuming that they will be meaningless I work in IT and I can assure you that software developers have been doing their best for the past 20 years to live up to that expectation.
- 6510 5y agoI'm currently breaking my head trying to fix a "you didn't fill out all fields" error for a form with only hidden fields. I keep thinking how useful the message must be to the user.
- gknoy 5y agoI still recall my father having various error messages from software (browsers, website, Word, etc), and when I'd translate them it was almost always a case of the error message being meaningful to me _but not in those words_, and so when I'd translate them for him he'd ask, "why didn't the error message say THAT?". It still is something I think about occasionally when trying to write logging or error messages -- how we got there, how to fix it, etc.
- newsbinator 5y agoAnybody have ideas on why the age divide on expectation + exploration vs. memorization seems so stark? In my experience the top predictor of whether a person can use a computer to do what they intended to do is age. Not IQ, not other mechanical or technical competence, not education, not cultural background, not linguistic aptitude, not reading speed, not creativity, not engineering or product design experience... mainly age. (with outliers of course)
- OkayPhysicist 5y agoMy guess is it's about how curious about new things you were when computers got popular. Computers are, compared to a lot of real world devices, a lot more complicated than pretty much any consumer tool that predates them, but also more forgiving. Most consumer appliances before computers had at most a couple of settings, all of which were clearly defined and handed to you. Anything beyond that involved aggressive tinkering that may or may not go well. Computers, on the other hand, have interfaces that are vastly larger than any human brain could hope to contain. So they require exploration. This comes naturally to children, less so to fully matured adults, and is extremely rare in people middle-aged or beyond. So you get a line based on how old they were when they first got their hands on a computer.
- netsharc 5y agoIt probably has to do with older people being introduced to computers as big, complicated machines with consequences if you mess up, while younger people were first exposed to computer games as kids and knowing it's possible to undo stuff. Until they end up coding a buggy smart contract and losing 6 figures.
- IIAOPSW 5y agoThe thing I've noticed about people on the other side of the divide is this irrational fear that doing anything incorrect, even once, is going to completely brick their device and cost a bunch of money. So they develop these weird superstitions and go through the ritualistic rote-learned menu clicks because exploration doesn't feel safe. I don't know the origin of this attitude.
- MonaroVXR 5y agoRelearn everything? I use the Apple, Google and Office Suite interchangeable, you don't need to relearn everything.
- lkbm 5y agoThis is no surprise to me. My dad wrote batch files when I was a kid. 98.bat give a list of items numbered 1-15. 3.bat then took you to a games directory wherein 99.bat gave you another numbered list list of 30+ games to choose from. I memorized nearly every number on both menus before I could read.
- _dain_ 5y agoThis is basically how my parents and grandparents navigate computers, despite being perfectly capable of reading. It infuriates me when tech companies just move shit around in the interface for no good reason and I have to teach them how to use it all over again. UI/UX people consistently fail this slice of people by not keeping to a stable interface.