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IT Concepts That Non-IT People Don’t Get

• stakent 17y ago
  So we need to hear feedback. So far so good. But what to do to hear those who don't talk to us? Whose do not fill out feedback forms, don't reply to mails, don't talk on the phone? They don't care enough to respond. They don't know how to respond. But at least some of their insights are valuable. How to reach them?
• hughprime 17y ago
  Worthless list. All over the place, from "non-IT people don't understand that the screen isn't the computer" (Really? How many people are still confused about that?) to "non-IT people don't understand how to set up a network" (yep, I have trouble with that one too).
  • enobrev 17y ago
    I strongly disagree. I've dealt with most of these questions at one time or another in recent years, and a Whole lot more 8 years back when I was in IT. Some people still think shutting off the monitor means shutting off the computer - even in the case of a flat screen. I've seen this at least 5 times this year alone. As a web developer the browser issue is the biggest and most consistent for me. The fact that you don't think these differences still exist perfectly defines the purpose of this list.
    • ams6110 17y ago
      Some people still think shutting off the monitor means shutting off the computer Heh. I had this problem with my mom who could never understand that she could record on her VCR even if the TV was off. Or tuned to another channel.
      • Periodic 17y ago
        I had an elderly lady who got a new computer, then called me about a week later because it was broken and wouldn't turn on. When I went over to check it I pushed the power button and it came on just fine. "How did you do that?" she asked. "I just pushed the power button. This button down here turns the computer on and off." "But I always just pushed a button on the keyboard and it turned on." And then I realized that she had never turned her computer off, only put it to sleep, for five years.
        • graywh 17y ago
          I want to live where there are no power disruptions for 5 years.
          • apotheon 17y ago
            At least the trains always run on time.
      • jacquesm 17y ago
        My grandmom categorically refused to undress in rooms with the TV on, the theory being that if she could see them, they might be able to see her. We never did manage to convince her...
        • GavinB 17y ago
          Pretty much every other part of 1984 has come true somewhere or other, why not that?
          • apotheon 17y ago
            Actually, that works for speakers -- since most speakers for a computer are designed in a manner that is identical to a means of designing a microphone (just with some of the dimensions altered for quality of sound, et cetera). I'm not so sure a similar principle would work for, say, an LCD monitor or CRT.
            • jacquesm 17y ago
              It definitely does not work for an LCD monitor or a CRT, I can guarantee you that. You're right about the loudspeaker and the microphone example though, since in the most common cases loudspeakers are electromagnetic devices that convert electricity to air pressure in front of a cone, and vice versa. In fact, almost every piece of electronics can function as a microphone (Coils, capacitors and so on), I built transmitters a long time ago and the measures you have to take to get rid of spurious microphony are pretty draconian.
        • wlievens 17y ago
          You actively tried to convince your grandmother to undress in places she didn't want to?
          • jacquesm 17y ago
            Haha, no, it came up in conversation and we tried to explain that the TV, even when it's on is strictly one-way. She didn't believe a word of it. I was waiting for a much more saucy version of your response after I realized there was some context missing ;)
  • boobiesmoker 17y ago
    Many people are still confused about that. I work in IT at a small insurance company and about 30-40% of our staff has no idea of the difference, and many still call their computers a "modem" for some reason.
    • ams6110 17y ago
      The most memorable for me was the user who called everything a "macro". Called once when his mouse stopped working and said his computer had "lost its mouse macros".
  • rabidgnat 17y ago
    The problems mentioned are huge in the over-30, non-tech crowd. I worked IT in college, and the skills of professors and admins older than 35 were much worse than the average English major in a computer lab. They viewed the machine as a Magic Box that let them type documents and browse the web and sometimes crashed if they angered it. Some needed help getting CDs out of the tray. Some didn't know that "check if it is plugged in" is a troubleshooting step. Some were very superstitious about crashes ("don't move the monitor!" was my favorite). If you don't see anyone struggling with these concepts, well, I haven't since I got a programming job 3 years ago. They didn't stop having problems, I just don't see the problems anymore. Always watch out for selection bias: the set of "people you know" isn't representative of the population at large
    • stakent 17y ago
      And that's the point of this list. One can argue against some or all of it's points, but overall message is unarguable. We are not our own target group. It's very difficult to look at website using mindeset of these people.
    • fsniper 17y ago
      Sometimes superstitious things like moving the monitor come to very rational causes. There can be a loose connection that tightens with monitor's pressure or an electrical leak prevented with that particular positioning of it.
• chaosmachine 17y ago
  "Now that monitors are much slimmer, people understand that the monitor is just a display mechanism, and the computer actually is under the desk." This is going to become less common. Many PC manufactures are now making iMac-style, everything-jammed-into-a-flat-panel systems.
  • pyre 17y ago
    The only issue that I take with people that don't understand that the monitor is not the computer: What do they think that the box under the desk is for? It's pretty easy to set up 'rules' for this: * If there is a box attached to the monitor (under the desk or otherwise) then the box is the computer. * If everything is plugged directly into the monitor, then the monitor is the computer. It's pretty simple, but people either just don't care or have it stuck in their heads that 'this' is the way the world is... and some people's opinions don't turn on a dime.
    • stakent 17y ago
      For some time it was floppy disk drive.
    • dkarl 17y ago
      What do they think that the box under the desk is for? What do you think the thing hanging down the back of your throat is for?
      • pyre 17y ago
        Point taken. I guess what I really take issue with is when people have these concepts (i.e. 'the computer is the monitor') and then you try to tell them different, and they fight you tooth and nail to keep you from changing their 'view of the world.' It's like someone knows that you're knowledgeable about a subject so they ask you a question, and you respond by informing them that most of what they think they know is wrong (and then telling them how things really are). Then they get pissed off and basically tell you that they know more about the subject than you do.
  • 17y ago
• nanexcool 17y ago
  My girlfriend always double clicks links. She also uses a Mac at work and thought she wouldn't be able to access her webmail on my PC because I didn't have Safari.
  • JanHancic 17y ago
    Almost everybody I know (that isn't in IT) double-clicks on links. Even my ex-boss (who was a programmer back in the day) double-clicks on links. And no matter how many times you try to explain the concept of "single-click" to them, they don't seem to get it.
    • scott_s 17y ago
      Or don't care and don't want to build in a special case.
      • derefr 17y ago
        Perhaps we should get the browser makers to make double-clicking links do something else, then; as it is, no amount of IT whinging will teach people to stop doing something that works anyway, just because it's technically non-optimal.
        • scott_s 17y ago
          Does it bother you that it's not optimal? It doesn't bother the people who do it. I think breaking things on purpose just to stop a behavior that's not harmful is unwise.
          • derefr 17y ago
            Doesn't bother me, but it does seem to bother the people who come up with these lists. (I am slightly bothered, though, by people who click on a a link, and then click it again when it's "loading too slowly," thinking that they're hurrying it along instead of going back to the start of a new request.) The best solution in both cases would be for the browser to simply ignore any attempts to load a GET of URL X in a given frame/window/tab when it's already attempting to load the same GET of URL X in that frame/window/tab.
• deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
• anonjon 17y ago
  Replace 'non-it' with 'stupid' and I'm totally on board...
• zck 17y ago
  >8. What Memory (RAM) Is For The best analogy I can find for RAM is short-term memory. RAM holds less stuff than long-term memory (hard disk), but is faster to access. And if you don't put an item into long-term memory (write to disk), you forget it (when the power is turned off). People seem to understand that.
  • rufo 17y ago
    I tend to liken RAM to a table, programs/data to books, and the hard drive to a bookshelf. You can't read stuff on a bookshelf; you have to take it out and put it on the table to open it. (Sure, you can read a book on a couch, but this is the computer we're talking about - it has certain rules.) You can take out as many books from the bookshelf as you like, as long as they fit on the open table. If you run out of table space, you need to make more space on the table, and the only way to do that is to put books back on the shelf. If you're trying to open too many books at once with too little table space, the only thing you can do is constantly go back and forth between the bookshelf and the table, open the book, find your place, etc., read a word, take it back, open the previous book, write it down, etc., and it's going to take you way longer to do the same work.
    • Periodic 17y ago
      That's a great analogy. I like it. I've been using the short-term memory analogy, but this fits a lot better. I know that we don't entirely understand our brain, but everyone understands books and a table. Too bad memory is divided into "pages" and not "books".
      • jimbokun 17y ago
        Or, equivalently, the table/bookshelf is a great analogy for short and long term memory. :)
    • theBobMcCormick 17y ago
      I use that analogy also. It really helps users to understand how memory and hard drive space are two different things. I can't tell you how many times I've had users tell me that they got some variety of out of memory error, then immediately start describing how they tried to delete stuff from their hard drive to fix it. :-)
• keefe 17y ago
  I really hope these issues have not persisted into 2009. I think basic computer literacy up to introductory programming is equivalent to literacy of the written word : not difficult, but revolutionary and absolutely necessary.
  • rufo 17y ago
    Trust me. We still have the same issues.
  • Semiapies 17y ago
    I'm afraid they have. There are lots of people, especially older people, who have managed to gain just exactly the knowledge they need to do their jobs with a computer - at least, when nothing unexpected happens.
  • whughes 17y ago
    You're conflating a few different types of computer literacy. Introductory programming, especially nowadays, doesn't have much to do with knowing whether the monitor is the computer or how to transfer files over a network. Certainly if you're programming for math or science you might not need those 'general computer skills.'
    • keefe 17y ago
      I'm deliberating lumping basic hardware and software literacy together. Everybody should understand the relationship between secondary storage, ram and the CPU. Everybody should understand that a computer program takes pieces of data in RAM and manipulates them using the CPU and has to make a special effort to get them to and from secondary storage or from a network connection and every should be able to basically understand how a program is, at some level of abstraction, a set of instructions for the computer to follow. They don't have to necessarily have particular operational skills - transference files on a particular networked system for example - but the basic knowledge of what is going on should be there.
      • enobrev 17y ago
• DanielStraight 17y ago
  EXCELLENT list. One, that of having a choice in software, had never even occurred to me before.
  • joe_the_user 17y ago
    This is a good list of many things that people might not get. But the crazy thing is that there no guarantee that a given user will or won't any one of these things - as well as no guarantee whether they will or won't other subtler things. After all this, it actually makes me less inclined to pander to all the user's possible ignorances. Rather than worry every strange conception that users might have, we should create a UI which is self-consistent, powerful and hides as little as possible. "Drag-and-drop" and "click versus double click" are two approaches which were created to make things "intuitive" but which are a disaster because they don't make any announcement of their presence and don't actually increase the number of options a user has. Hierarchical files and hierarchical menus may indeed not be "gotten" by some people but those people need to be educated and once they are, they use just about any standard-conformant GUI app whereas each time the latest visual-fu-metaphor is added to a given app, everyone will always need to parse it again.
  • GavinB 17y ago
    Surprisingly, to my knowledge there is no layperson-accessible site that explains and offers downloads of the most popular open source offerings--firefox, open office, GIMP etc. Everything I have found is either hopelessly technical or stuffed with thousands and thousands of poor quality programs. There are lots of individual sites, but no where that you can point someone that will take care of them.
• mcantor 17y ago
  I simply have to point out how awesome it is to be on a site where the two comments beginning with "Excellent list" and "Worthless list" are both equally upvoted to the top of the thread list. Thank you, HN, for letting me hold on to a sliver of faith in humanity.
  • pchristensen 17y ago
    I can't tell if this is genuine or sarcastic.
    • mcantor 17y ago
      It was completely genuine. I try to avoid sarcasm on the internet as much as possible, unless it's stupendously obvious, simply for reasons like this. These days, it seems like people are increasingly uncomfortable disagreeing with each other: "I disagree" is often meant or interpreted as "You're wrong, and you should never have spoken up in the first place, you foolish whelp." That's why I was really delighted to see a pair of contradictory opinions sharing the top of an HN comment list: it meant, cursorily, that every person who upvoted one did not automatically downvote the other, but also that the community as a whole values the disagreement itself. I know I'm making a mountain out of a molehill now, but only for the purpose of explaining why I wasn't being sarcastic.
      • pchristensen 17y ago
        Thanks for the clarification! Most people have learned that sarcasm doesn't work in print, hence the <sarcasm> tag, so I assumed it was genuine. It was just such a striking comment - contradictory opinions showing faith in humanity.
      • Psyonic 17y ago
        And how exactly would one go about downvoting comments on this site?
        • deleted 17y ago
          [deleted]
• fumbdaggot 17y ago
  Shit, negro, shit, negro, shit negro sheeee-----e---e---et!
• pchristensen 17y ago
  #9: "I’ve saved my files on the office computer; how can I get them on the laptop?" I instantly thought of Dropbox - and they mentioned it two paragraphs later as a way to magically solve this problem. I seriously can't praise Dropbox enough for its awesomeness.
  • jimbokun 17y ago
    So a good way to look for other business ideas is to look at other issues on the list and brainstorm solutions for them, similarly to the way Dropbox solved the problem of moving files between computers for non-computer experts.
• juanchico 17y ago
  can we stop using IT to mean "desktop support"? It's sort of like the Visual Basic of programming. What I mean is, it's quite similar to the debate over job titles "programmer" versus "software engineer". But I guess I'm going against the grain on this one. Or maybe it all starts here and will snowball and take over.
  • enobrev 17y ago
    In my experience, IT includes desktop support. When I was in IT (sys-admin for the company I worked for and did on-site support in data centers for our server / client product for major banks on wall street), I still found myself doing an inordinate amount of desktop support. In many cases one does not exist without the other.
• TrevorJ 17y ago
  I've found that what concepts people understand or don't is greatly effected by personality and the way there own minds are organized. On that note, it would be fascinating to see if there is a way to use a some sort of psychological profile and a standardized approach that would allow for programs to be customized for each individual. Yes, this is pretty pie-in-the-sky but Someday it would be a really interesting development.
  • stakent 17y ago
    I've found that people don't understand and can't do many things if they see no personal gain in understanding or doing. Contrary to my findings I like your idea very much. Maybe the proliferation of webapps is the first steep in this direction? Gathering massive amounts of data about using application by individual users plus tools used for behavioral analysis - maybe?
    • TrevorJ 17y ago
      I'm thinking even simpler than that, although your approach is interesting as well. Psychologist have gotten very good at using a series of questions to figure out basic personality traits. If you could develop a test that generates values which can be shared in a standardized manner with any program, then those programs could all present data in ways that make sense to the user. Example: Macintosh has several different options for how you interact with files (cover flow, collapsible folders, icons) If all of the programs that allow for file interaction knew that I am visual and prefer to see coverflow by default then I'd feel much more at home as an end user becasue my interactions become more consistent no matter what program I am using. Other areas that could benefit: color usage/dialogue boxes. Overall paradigms for file organization - I, for instance am very spatially aware, whereas many people would prefer rigid folder hierarchy as the method of choice for organizing and finding files.
• jmorin007 17y ago
  #11 the difference between "upload" and "download".
• trunnell 17y ago
  8. What Memory (RAM) Is For I like to use a desk metaphor when explaining disk vs. RAM to relatives, etc. If the hard disk is the filing cabinet, the amount of RAM is like the size of your desk. You can take a file out of the filing cabinet and work on it at your desk. If you take out 5 files, you need a bigger desk. If you run out of room on the desk, you have to put files back in the cabinet, e.g. close the window. It's not a perfect metaphor but for some reason they usually get it much better than talking about RAM as "what your programs use." EDIT: oops, it looks like I'm not the only one with this idea http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=853104 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=853104
• sketerpot 17y ago
  I met a group of several people who were very persistently trying to put a floppy disk in a CD-ROM drive. They refused to listen to my polite explanations that it just doesn't go in that slot. They tried for half an hour, and I think they broke the CD-ROM drive at some point. Ignorance is understandable. I'm ignorant about all sorts of things. But what I don't get is willful ignorance.
• apotheon 17y ago
  My response was too long for a comment here, so I posted it elsewhere: http://sob.apotheon.org/?p=1633 http://sob.apotheon.org/?p=1633
  • enobrev 17y ago
    The smugness in your blog post devours any point that could have come across as useful.