9 ms·

“What’s a Browser?” – Remembering the Non-Tech-Savvy User

30 points by philk10 13y ago

michaelfeathers 13y ago
In the glory days of AOL I ran into non-tech savvy users who thought that it was the internet. I was met with blank stares when I opened another IE instance. In many cases, companies that develop software for non-tech-savvy users go the extra mile to make things easy to use. For me, it's been easy to believe that it was somewhat predatory to make your "thing" a complete portal, but I can see now that it is really a consequence of trying to approach users at their level. What irks me is when it seems like a conscious lock-in strategy.
- 83457 13y ago
  To be fair, initially it was a portal to itself. As in AOL did not original provide internet access, heck it was pre-www days. When they added it making it part of the existing portal interface was logical for various reasons including reducing customer service. But yeah, they also wanted people to use their content over internet sources.
  - michaelfeathers 13y ago
    Thanks. I forgot all about that. What it became makes a lot of sense in that light.
- rartichoke 13y ago
  I still have a client who is like this now. He still goes through AOL and thinks it's the internet. The funny thing about it though is that he usually says things like "the page needs more pop", "make that bright red and bold because I can't see it", etc.. AKA, he has no idea what he's talking about but thinks he does. I stopped taking new work from him because it was the most infuriating thing imaginable.
  - ryanmcbride 13y ago
    My friend's mom still connects via dial-up to AOL to check her email and read the news. Until my friend told me this I was completely unaware that AOL still offered internet services.
- mmanfrin 13y ago
  What's the AOL Keyword of your website?
- ryanmcbride 13y ago
  If I only knew when I was a kid, and had access only to AOL kid's, that I could open IE and look at all the porn in the world... My life might be very different now.
kaoD 13y ago
Related: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ Asking passersby in Times Square what is a browser.
- ahoy 13y ago
  What's most interesting about this, I think, is people's unwillingness to admit they don't know something. No one wants to look stupid, or ignorant, or uneducated, even in front of complete strangers. I'm certainly guilty of this, I suspect most of us are.
  - wutbrodo 13y ago
    Hell if anything (at least for me), doing it in front of complete strangers makes it way worse. I freely admit ignorance to people I know even slightly well; they already know I'm a certain level of intelligence, so I don't worry as much about one contradictory data pt. By contrast, in front of strangers, the only thing they'll know about me is my ignorance in that situation.
pauletienney 13y ago
Remembering ? Those people are the huge majority.
- jgranby 13y ago
  'Remembering' as in 'bearing in mind' rather than 'looking back nostalgically' (i.e. as in 'remember to look both ways before you cross the road'). My first instinct on seeing the title was the same as yours.
M4v3R 13y ago
> I got her to show me how she used the computer; she got into Facebook by typing Facebook into Bing and clicking on the search result. This is so common to non tech-savvy people (I observed this dozens of time) that it makes you wonder why browsers adopted single bar for searching AND entering the URLs so late. This, when implemented properly, solves the problem, because usually you only need to type just few letters from site name and hit Enter to go there.
- cosmie 13y ago
  The problem is you have to know that behavior exists. Many of the users that "search to site" will still type Google into the omnibox, and complete the process as they always have (by searching Google for Facebook and clicking the link).
- donutz 13y ago
  Even this "you only need to type just few letters from site name" escapes many of these people. They'll continue typing the whole search term, or the whole domain name, even if Google has already auto-filled it. I've seen it happen.
- freehunter 13y ago
  I had a Java professor who would load up a browser and use the Google search box on the school's homepage to search for Yahoo and then put a URL into the Yahoo search page. Most infuriating thing I've ever seen.
- oftenwrong 13y ago
  A few years back there was an amusing instance of a blog post overtaking the facebook login page on google when people searched for "facebook login" http://readwrite.com/2010/02/11/how_google_failed_internet_meme http://readwrite.com/2010/02/11/how_google_failed_internet_m...
pauletienney 13y ago
Some of my friends (no maxi geek but 30 yo, gamers, smartphone users ...) still type google.com in chrome bar in order to type Facebook in google and then access FB via search results ... Mindfuck
- ryanmcbride 13y ago
  I'll bet they also don't use the scroll wheel.
Shalle 13y ago
This is interesting, many of the people I talk with believes that the browser is "internet". Which makes me giggle a bit inside everytime.
ucarion 13y ago
I imagine most fields have a lot of jargon too; it's just that technology is one of the few areas that has become essentially ubiquitous, so we notice the difference between technology-savvy and non-technology-savvy more often. I imagine that in the eyes of tax experts, we are all totally ignorant of how we could make the most out of the tax system.
- wutbrodo 13y ago
  In my opinion, that's exactly the problem. I don't understand how people don't do the math in their head that spending half an hour learning* to be more efficient at something that you use for hours and hours every day is worth it. I couldn't get my oft-texting mom to switch to T9 (back in the era of dumbphones) because she didn't want to "waste her time" (though she was fine constantly pecking out texts more than twice as slowly as she could have been). I finally convinced my mom once she saw that it only took my _grandma_ a day to pick it up. *Even just by asking a friend. In my experience, tech-savvy friends (including myself) are extremely willing to explain how things work, since it's a welcome respite from "just fix it"
skellystudios 13y ago
Having done loads of tech support for old people, I've really got used to being sensitive about the terminology I used - and their 'alternative' terms. Some of the best examples: - 'the green' for the desktop (that teal desktop background from Win98) - 'e' for the internet ("So when I'm on e...") - 'the computer' for the screen - particularly hard to diagnose over the phone Also, several times I fell foul to the old bash.org facepalmer of physical action when I ask if they can "open a window". Skeomorphism can be confusing.
- yoshokatana 13y ago
  A direct quote from my time at the Kodak call center, after pointing out how to navigate to Control Panel (via the start menu): "Start? My computer's already on!"
- sp332 13y ago
  It's not like these things have labels on them. (Well Win8 finally has a button that says "Desktop".) "Window" and "cursor" and "icon" etc is really just jargon.
bowlofpetunias 13y ago
Here's the kicker: most of these non-tech-savvy users are not the older generation. They are the younger generation. The generation that is used to tech that "just works", without ever having to figure out why it doesn't.
- MarcScott 13y ago
  As a teacher of Computing, I couldn't agree more. I've blogged about it here http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/ http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-co... Habits I see daily include: typing domain names into search bars, using Caps Lock to type a single uppercase letter, holding down off buttons to 'shutdown' a computer, using passwords like asdfg1234.
  - gcb0 13y ago
    The whole issue with the industry (specially here) is that the drive to just make it work completely obliviates the user. Maybe we should strive to better inform while making it just work.
    - pestaa 13y ago
      In my opinion there's no fix for lack of curiosity.
      - tjoff 13y ago
        Well, the "smart"phones of today hardly inspire curiosity...
        yareally 13y ago
        I've seen plenty of non-tech savvy users become curious on how to mod their Android device. Most don't go very far past "1 click root," but there's always a small number that have dreams of learning to compile Android or even learning how to do some coding. Heck, I've even had a few people in their 40s and 50s quietly messaage me on Android forums asking for how they can learn more about development and recommendations for learning the basics for programming. Most of that is just from someone that one day decided to root their device and then it opened up a "can of worms" that lead down a path of curiosity. I'd say if a person has the spark of curiosity to learn, they will do it regardless of device. It matters more though on if they're encouraged and are shown that even they can learn what many people think of as "magic" (even though we all know it isn't :) ).
codva 13y ago
Back in 1996 I had a side gig teaching Internet 101 to people who generally had just bought their first computer at WalMart and were afraid to open the box. Every class the first mention of "mouse" caused a few hands to go up and ask what a mouse was. Most of them had the mouse in their other hand at the time. We used Yahoo for search, and Alta Vista for the 'Advanced Search Strategies" class.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
jmuguy 13y ago
Working in Windows IT with small businesses you run into a lot of non-savvy users. We tolerate a lot of simple issues, I mean simple issues are our bread and butter sometimes, but it can be a little ridiculous. I expect the average office user to know a few things. To remember their username. To be able to choose a different printer than the default. My opinion is that their job, their paycheck, depends on their work on the PC. And they’ve been using it for decades in some cases, you’d think something would get through. For some though I think its just too abstract, they don’t have a good mind for thinking about the computer. And that’s ok. I often feel bad for small business users. If they’re living in Microsoft’s world and without volume licensing they are forced into whatever new flavors of Office and Windows are in the pipe when they get a new computer. You try explaining that no Office 2013 isn’t really all that much better for basic functionality than Office 2003. Or anything about Windows 8.
- Ziomislaw 13y ago
  heh, reminds me of office ladies using calculator to _type_ a proper sum of a column into XLS (using computer for 10+ years doing THE SAME THING)
  - pestaa 13y ago
    I've heard worse. One such office worker is tasked to duplicate an Excel file. She does so by printing the original one, manually drawing the grids with pen and ruler, labeling the columns, and then typing it all in cell by cell. She works by the hour and earns massive amount of cash.
- chrischen 13y ago
  Skeuomorphism to the rescue!
- RyJones 13y ago
  I rather liked amazon's solution to the printer selection issue: there is a badge reader on every printer, when you print something it goes to the Great Spooler In The Cloud, when you want it to emit as paper you walk to the printer you want, badge in, and it prints your items. The UI is wonky and slow, but it's better than the solution I've seen everywhere else: the stack of orphan printouts from someone that moved to another building/city long ago.
shmerl 13y ago
It reminds me: https://youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ https://youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ
GeneralMayhem 13y ago
Why do we need to remember these people? Car manufacturers don't have to say "wait, what if they don't know what a door handle is."
- recursive 13y ago
  A door handle is much simpler concept. Car manufacturers do have to say "wait, what if they don't know what a transmission is?"
  - wutbrodo 13y ago
    I don't know about that. It seems like the complexity of operating a car (at least in terms of "# of things you need to know about") is pretty similar to that of a computer (at least on Linux/Mac systems; Windows is needlessly complicated for the non-tech-savvy user imo). In a car the things you HAVE to understand are the shifter, (P/D/N), the interplay between gas/brake/coasting (which is more complex than it sounds; just ask any new driver), the array of necessary controls for auxiliary devices (headlights, windshield wipers, side-view mirror controls, etc). EDIT: forgot the emergency brake, and all the rules/mechanics of the road (stop signs, parking on a hill, left turns, right turns, etc etc etc etc) For a computer, for most people's day-to-day usage, the only things you really need to understand are: logging in to the computer, the browser, Google, and the URL bar (technically optional, as many people use Google directly for everything). I understand that, complexity-wise, each of these don't match up one-to-one with the car example, but the fact remains that with very little effort, and almost no "under-the-hood" understanding, you can become what passes for "savvy" these days. Anecdotally, my dad has always been extremely non-tech-savvy; He had _years_ of being set in his cargo cult usage of his computer (in which he didn't really distinguish between having a browser open and being on his att yahoo homepage, having a window minimized and having it closed, logging into yahoo and logging into the computer, etc). I was able to explain to him the 3 or 4 pieces that fit together using a simple example (e.g. "websites are places you go, the browser is the vehicle that gets you there", etc). He still doesn't necessarily understand anything even marginally under-the-hood; But he understands the operation of a computer (for his purposes) pretty solidly, and no longer has the issue of being helpless when the situation he encounters deviates slightly from what he's used to (i.e. opening the browser and not being logged in to yahoo, for whatever reason).
6d0debc071 13y ago
Many people don't struggle to understand how to use computers. They don't understand them particularly well, but they don't struggle to understand them either. They rise to a level with the problems that they want to use the system to address and then... their understanding is adequate until something goes wrong. What possible motivation would they have to learn more? Okay, they might use a computer in their job - but inefficiency there is often their employer's problem, and considering you can't run arbitrary code on most companies systems (their IT policy generally excludes this) they benefit nothing from learning a programming language. What does that leave them with? A games machine perhaps, a glorified typewriter with some telecoms capabilities to all intents and purposes. The concept of computers as a general tool simply does not exist to many people. Consequently it's little wonder that they know next to nothing about them.
ryanmcbride 13y ago
Every conversation I have with someone who's having browser troubles: "What browser do you use?" "I don't use a browser, I use the internet" I then know exactly what the problem is.
doubledub 13y ago
I've always assumed younger users were sharper at correcting problems and knowing most of these terms since electronics were available at younger ages. Seems like more opportunities to accidentally discover fixes/areas/tools/etc. Our recently created business targets relatively older users, so we had to make adjustment for knowledge levels similar to what this article mentions. Favorite quote from article, "This fix was easy: switch to Chrome (remove 5 different search toolbars!) and voila, baby and cat photos and Bubble Safari all working as intended." Thanks Mark Zuckerberg!

30 points by philk10 13y ago

In the glory days of AOL I ran into non-tech savvy users who thought that it was the internet. I was met with blank stares when I opened another IE instance. In many cases, companies that develop software for non-tech-savvy users go the extra mile to make things easy to use. For me, it's been easy to believe that it was somewhat predatory to make your "thing" a complete portal, but I can see now that it is really a consequence of trying to approach users at their level. What irks me is when it seems like a conscious lock-in strategy.

83457 13y ago
To be fair, initially it was a portal to itself. As in AOL did not original provide internet access, heck it was pre-www days. When they added it making it part of the existing portal interface was logical for various reasons including reducing customer service. But yeah, they also wanted people to use their content over internet sources.
- michaelfeathers 13y ago
  Thanks. I forgot all about that. What it became makes a lot of sense in that light.
rartichoke 13y ago
I still have a client who is like this now. He still goes through AOL and thinks it's the internet. The funny thing about it though is that he usually says things like "the page needs more pop", "make that bright red and bold because I can't see it", etc.. AKA, he has no idea what he's talking about but thinks he does. I stopped taking new work from him because it was the most infuriating thing imaginable.
- ryanmcbride 13y ago
  My friend's mom still connects via dial-up to AOL to check her email and read the news. Until my friend told me this I was completely unaware that AOL still offered internet services.
mmanfrin 13y ago
What's the AOL Keyword of your website?
ryanmcbride 13y ago
If I only knew when I was a kid, and had access only to AOL kid's, that I could open IE and look at all the porn in the world... My life might be very different now.

kaoD 13y ago

Related: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ Asking passersby in Times Square what is a browser.

ahoy 13y ago
What's most interesting about this, I think, is people's unwillingness to admit they don't know something. No one wants to look stupid, or ignorant, or uneducated, even in front of complete strangers. I'm certainly guilty of this, I suspect most of us are.
- wutbrodo 13y ago
  Hell if anything (at least for me), doing it in front of complete strangers makes it way worse. I freely admit ignorance to people I know even slightly well; they already know I'm a certain level of intelligence, so I don't worry as much about one contradictory data pt. By contrast, in front of strangers, the only thing they'll know about me is my ignorance in that situation.

pauletienney 13y ago

Remembering ? Those people are the huge majority.

jgranby 13y ago
'Remembering' as in 'bearing in mind' rather than 'looking back nostalgically' (i.e. as in 'remember to look both ways before you cross the road'). My first instinct on seeing the title was the same as yours.

M4v3R 13y ago

> I got her to show me how she used the computer; she got into Facebook by typing Facebook into Bing and clicking on the search result. This is so common to non tech-savvy people (I observed this dozens of time) that it makes you wonder why browsers adopted single bar for searching AND entering the URLs so late. This, when implemented properly, solves the problem, because usually you only need to type just few letters from site name and hit Enter to go there.

cosmie 13y ago
The problem is you have to know that behavior exists. Many of the users that "search to site" will still type Google into the omnibox, and complete the process as they always have (by searching Google for Facebook and clicking the link).
donutz 13y ago
Even this "you only need to type just few letters from site name" escapes many of these people. They'll continue typing the whole search term, or the whole domain name, even if Google has already auto-filled it. I've seen it happen.
freehunter 13y ago
I had a Java professor who would load up a browser and use the Google search box on the school's homepage to search for Yahoo and then put a URL into the Yahoo search page. Most infuriating thing I've ever seen.
oftenwrong 13y ago
A few years back there was an amusing instance of a blog post overtaking the facebook login page on google when people searched for "facebook login" http://readwrite.com/2010/02/11/how_google_failed_internet_meme http://readwrite.com/2010/02/11/how_google_failed_internet_m...

pauletienney 13y ago

Some of my friends (no maxi geek but 30 yo, gamers, smartphone users ...) still type google.com in chrome bar in order to type Facebook in google and then access FB via search results ... Mindfuck

ryanmcbride 13y ago
I'll bet they also don't use the scroll wheel.

Shalle 13y ago

This is interesting, many of the people I talk with believes that the browser is "internet". Which makes me giggle a bit inside everytime.

ucarion 13y ago

I imagine most fields have a lot of jargon too; it's just that technology is one of the few areas that has become essentially ubiquitous, so we notice the difference between technology-savvy and non-technology-savvy more often. I imagine that in the eyes of tax experts, we are all totally ignorant of how we could make the most out of the tax system.

wutbrodo 13y ago
In my opinion, that's exactly the problem. I don't understand how people don't do the math in their head that spending half an hour learning* to be more efficient at something that you use for hours and hours every day is worth it. I couldn't get my oft-texting mom to switch to T9 (back in the era of dumbphones) because she didn't want to "waste her time" (though she was fine constantly pecking out texts more than twice as slowly as she could have been). I finally convinced my mom once she saw that it only took my _grandma_ a day to pick it up. *Even just by asking a friend. In my experience, tech-savvy friends (including myself) are extremely willing to explain how things work, since it's a welcome respite from "just fix it"

skellystudios 13y ago

Having done loads of tech support for old people, I've really got used to being sensitive about the terminology I used - and their 'alternative' terms. Some of the best examples: - 'the green' for the desktop (that teal desktop background from Win98) - 'e' for the internet ("So when I'm on e...") - 'the computer' for the screen - particularly hard to diagnose over the phone Also, several times I fell foul to the old bash.org facepalmer of physical action when I ask if they can "open a window". Skeomorphism can be confusing.

yoshokatana 13y ago
A direct quote from my time at the Kodak call center, after pointing out how to navigate to Control Panel (via the start menu): "Start? My computer's already on!"
sp332 13y ago
It's not like these things have labels on them. (Well Win8 finally has a button that says "Desktop".) "Window" and "cursor" and "icon" etc is really just jargon.

bowlofpetunias 13y ago

Here's the kicker: most of these non-tech-savvy users are not the older generation. They are the younger generation. The generation that is used to tech that "just works", without ever having to figure out why it doesn't.

MarcScott 13y ago
As a teacher of Computing, I couldn't agree more. I've blogged about it here http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/ http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-co... Habits I see daily include: typing domain names into search bars, using Caps Lock to type a single uppercase letter, holding down off buttons to 'shutdown' a computer, using passwords like asdfg1234.
- gcb0 13y ago
  The whole issue with the industry (specially here) is that the drive to just make it work completely obliviates the user. Maybe we should strive to better inform while making it just work.
  - pestaa 13y ago
    In my opinion there's no fix for lack of curiosity.
    - tjoff 13y ago
      Well, the "smart"phones of today hardly inspire curiosity...
      - yareally 13y ago
        I've seen plenty of non-tech savvy users become curious on how to mod their Android device. Most don't go very far past "1 click root," but there's always a small number that have dreams of learning to compile Android or even learning how to do some coding. Heck, I've even had a few people in their 40s and 50s quietly messaage me on Android forums asking for how they can learn more about development and recommendations for learning the basics for programming. Most of that is just from someone that one day decided to root their device and then it opened up a "can of worms" that lead down a path of curiosity. I'd say if a person has the spark of curiosity to learn, they will do it regardless of device. It matters more though on if they're encouraged and are shown that even they can learn what many people think of as "magic" (even though we all know it isn't :) ).

codva 13y ago

Back in 1996 I had a side gig teaching Internet 101 to people who generally had just bought their first computer at WalMart and were afraid to open the box. Every class the first mention of "mouse" caused a few hands to go up and ask what a mouse was. Most of them had the mouse in their other hand at the time. We used Yahoo for search, and Alta Vista for the 'Advanced Search Strategies" class.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

jmuguy 13y ago

Working in Windows IT with small businesses you run into a lot of non-savvy users. We tolerate a lot of simple issues, I mean simple issues are our bread and butter sometimes, but it can be a little ridiculous. I expect the average office user to know a few things. To remember their username. To be able to choose a different printer than the default. My opinion is that their job, their paycheck, depends on their work on the PC. And they’ve been using it for decades in some cases, you’d think something would get through. For some though I think its just too abstract, they don’t have a good mind for thinking about the computer. And that’s ok. I often feel bad for small business users. If they’re living in Microsoft’s world and without volume licensing they are forced into whatever new flavors of Office and Windows are in the pipe when they get a new computer. You try explaining that no Office 2013 isn’t really all that much better for basic functionality than Office 2003. Or anything about Windows 8.

Ziomislaw 13y ago
heh, reminds me of office ladies using calculator to _type_ a proper sum of a column into XLS (using computer for 10+ years doing THE SAME THING)
- pestaa 13y ago
  I've heard worse. One such office worker is tasked to duplicate an Excel file. She does so by printing the original one, manually drawing the grids with pen and ruler, labeling the columns, and then typing it all in cell by cell. She works by the hour and earns massive amount of cash.
chrischen 13y ago
Skeuomorphism to the rescue!
RyJones 13y ago
I rather liked amazon's solution to the printer selection issue: there is a badge reader on every printer, when you print something it goes to the Great Spooler In The Cloud, when you want it to emit as paper you walk to the printer you want, badge in, and it prints your items. The UI is wonky and slow, but it's better than the solution I've seen everywhere else: the stack of orphan printouts from someone that moved to another building/city long ago.

shmerl 13y ago

It reminds me: https://youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ https://youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ

GeneralMayhem 13y ago

Why do we need to remember these people? Car manufacturers don't have to say "wait, what if they don't know what a door handle is."

recursive 13y ago
A door handle is much simpler concept. Car manufacturers do have to say "wait, what if they don't know what a transmission is?"
- wutbrodo 13y ago
  I don't know about that. It seems like the complexity of operating a car (at least in terms of "# of things you need to know about") is pretty similar to that of a computer (at least on Linux/Mac systems; Windows is needlessly complicated for the non-tech-savvy user imo). In a car the things you HAVE to understand are the shifter, (P/D/N), the interplay between gas/brake/coasting (which is more complex than it sounds; just ask any new driver), the array of necessary controls for auxiliary devices (headlights, windshield wipers, side-view mirror controls, etc). EDIT: forgot the emergency brake, and all the rules/mechanics of the road (stop signs, parking on a hill, left turns, right turns, etc etc etc etc) For a computer, for most people's day-to-day usage, the only things you really need to understand are: logging in to the computer, the browser, Google, and the URL bar (technically optional, as many people use Google directly for everything). I understand that, complexity-wise, each of these don't match up one-to-one with the car example, but the fact remains that with very little effort, and almost no "under-the-hood" understanding, you can become what passes for "savvy" these days. Anecdotally, my dad has always been extremely non-tech-savvy; He had _years_ of being set in his cargo cult usage of his computer (in which he didn't really distinguish between having a browser open and being on his att yahoo homepage, having a window minimized and having it closed, logging into yahoo and logging into the computer, etc). I was able to explain to him the 3 or 4 pieces that fit together using a simple example (e.g. "websites are places you go, the browser is the vehicle that gets you there", etc). He still doesn't necessarily understand anything even marginally under-the-hood; But he understands the operation of a computer (for his purposes) pretty solidly, and no longer has the issue of being helpless when the situation he encounters deviates slightly from what he's used to (i.e. opening the browser and not being logged in to yahoo, for whatever reason).

6d0debc071 13y ago

Many people don't struggle to understand how to use computers. They don't understand them particularly well, but they don't struggle to understand them either. They rise to a level with the problems that they want to use the system to address and then... their understanding is adequate until something goes wrong. What possible motivation would they have to learn more? Okay, they might use a computer in their job - but inefficiency there is often their employer's problem, and considering you can't run arbitrary code on most companies systems (their IT policy generally excludes this) they benefit nothing from learning a programming language. What does that leave them with? A games machine perhaps, a glorified typewriter with some telecoms capabilities to all intents and purposes. The concept of computers as a general tool simply does not exist to many people. Consequently it's little wonder that they know next to nothing about them.

ryanmcbride 13y ago

Every conversation I have with someone who's having browser troubles: "What browser do you use?" "I don't use a browser, I use the internet" I then know exactly what the problem is.

doubledub 13y ago

I've always assumed younger users were sharper at correcting problems and knowing most of these terms since electronics were available at younger ages. Seems like more opportunities to accidentally discover fixes/areas/tools/etc. Our recently created business targets relatively older users, so we had to make adjustment for knowledge levels similar to what this article mentions. Favorite quote from article, "This fix was easy: switch to Chrome (remove 5 different search toolbars!) and voila, baby and cat photos and Bubble Safari all working as intended." Thanks Mark Zuckerberg!