Hello brotherhood, i just couldn't describe it better, since my english-skills aren't so great...

People must learn to use computers

By devurandom (2.06) on 2006-11-21 19:44:22 UTC
From the article:
"Inevitably, you are going to think of a long list of intelligent, defensible reasons why each of these options is absolutely, positively essential. Don't bother. I know. Each additional choice makes complete sense until you find yourself explaining to your uncle that he has to choose between 15 different ways to turn off a laptop."

When I read such bull**** I'd love to go to his uncle home and tell him "Hi, your nephew thinks you're a complete, utter, hopeless moron and moreover explains it on his public blog. Oh, and this is a baseball bat, just in case."

People must stop to dumb down computer because, in order to use a computer, you must learn how to. There is no other way. Many people praise the Mac as the easiest to use computer, but I've seen people completely unable to understand even it, because they don't know how to use a computer, period.

No matter how much you dumb down the interface, when they'll run out of disk space or they'll have to install a printer they'll just shout "WTF?". A friend of mine complained that "the computer is getting slow because the memory is full of films", unable to understand the difference between a RAM and an hard disk.

The problem is simple. Computers are complex tools. They are the most complex tools ever, because they can do almost everything. Complex tools require complex knowledge, there is no other way. You can achieve some very basic task without this knowledge, ok, but this is not using a computer.

The real problem is that we're giving computers to people without having them learn what a computer is, like if they are simple, dumb objects. Even worse, most people do not even feel the need for this, and even geeks are caught by this trap, feeling that "computers must be easy for everyone".

You see the results of this philosophy. People caught in ridicolous phishing traps/virus/spyware, crappy MySpace pages, subpar software that dominates just because of inertia, and people wasting time in dumbing down interfaces for people that will anyway have problems with them instead of help people (and computers) doing complex, useful tasks.

What we really need is alphabetization. In schools, for example. Really. Badly need. Think how more productive would everyone be with a working, inside knowledge of how the most useful, general purpose tool ever built by mankind works. Think about how security would be a much different problem. People must learn. There is no other solution about this.

from here: http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=16536

That's a typical geekist perspective. People are idiots, and the problem isn't with the software and the interface, it's that people aren't smart enough. Puh-leez.

I believe the exact opposite. I believe geeks TRY to make software that's arcane to use, and difficult and complicated, because it makes them seem magic. They are out of a job when a computer interface is intuitive, and easy to learn.

I really don't think you can go too intuitive, you know? But the problem is, geeks want their cake and to eat it too. They DUMB DOWN, rather than truly design intuitive software. There is a huge difference. They are coming at it from the perspective that they are superior beings, the only ones REALLY worthy of computer use, because of their juicy chessclub brains... and so they start from a foundation of CONTEMPT for computer users. They see everyone like morons on the other end of a tech support line who don't know how to plug things in. Consequently, the interfaces they come up with are geared to what they believe the userbase to be: retards not WORTHY of getting work done. So they get crib-toys, eye-candy slacker engines with fancy effects not grounded in productivity. They create layers of interface like science projects for themselves. Spinning-gears intellectual everests that they can scale, without ever really giving computer users something useful. Merely crap that you can show off to your friends and have them go, "gee whiz"...

To me, that's all the Mac is right now. A showoff machine. Something that impresses the easily impressable. A demo. Every feature is there just to create that giddy first impression. The slow genie-suck, the command-tab array... crapsposé... it doesn't matter that nothing is really useful. All that matters is that it's somewhat engaging the first time you show it off.

Yeah, sure, people have to learn the basics. But it's up to developers and software engineers to have the basics MAKE FUCKING SENSE. The desktop metaphor is a perfect example. It made sophisticated ideas easy to grasp. Computers under the legacy Mac interface became tools. Now, they're some kind of Magic: The Gathering twiddle engine, where the only people who can truly unlock their potential, are geeks with no life. Who have the time to spend on complete and utter bullshit arcana.

The problem has never been about changing people. That's what Apple's TRYING right now, and why they're failing with OS X. They can only corral so many rubes, before the user base rebels. No, the real answer is to make stuff that works. Works well, and has an intuitive semiotic program.

A visual, symbolic interface that makes sense to use, something streamlined and reliable. Not something with fifty layers of eye candy and a hundred ways to do the most trivial tasks, but NO really good way to do the most important tasks.

Absolutely thalo. For some reason software engineers become especially susceptible to this odd line of reasoning. Maybe it's somewhat inherent to the job.

Every so often one of my engineers will spout a variation of the idiot customer theory and advance the notion that we must somehow redesign the customer to fit the product --that way the product will be perfect. Generally, I gently remind him that our customers paid for the new Audi he just bought and also the doughnut he's munching while advancing the theory.

I'll tell you what's so enticing about such theories. They enhance the speaker's self-esteem. Many engineers like to think of themselves as smart, intelligent people. So, any theory along the lines of "we're so smart - they're so stupid" is likely to be attractive because it enhances the speaker's self-esteem.

You can see this tendency in nearly any field. In astronomy the theory that the entire universe revolved around the earth (and the theorist) was mighty attractive and resistant to evidence to the contrary because it enhanced self-esteem. You see the same effect in religion and politics. People are attracted to "we're so blessed and saved - they're so cursed and unholy" theories, or "we're so good - they're so evil" theories because they enhance the speaker's self-esteem. Who doesn't enjoy thinking of themselves as being superior to others? It feels good. Just like it feels good for engineers to think of themselves as smart, intelligent people. Theories that heighten those feelings are readily accepted as being true, often self-evidently true.

There is a general lesson to be learned from this. In any field, if you develop a theory that you can see enhances your self-esteem you should be aware enough to recognize the seducing power of such theories and check and double check the thing for accuracy. Otherwise you can be a smart, intelligent person and still come to the conclusion that we should redesign customers to fit the product.

quote:

Originally posted by HighHopes:
Absolutely thalo. For some reason software engineers become especially susceptible to this odd line of reasoning. Maybe it's somewhat inherent to the job.

Every so often one of my engineers will spout a variation of the idiot customer theory and advance the notion that we must somehow redesign the customer to fit the product --that way the product will be perfect. Generally, I gently remind him that our customers paid for the new Audi he just bought and also the doughnut he's munching while advancing the theory.

I'll tell you what's so enticing about such theories. They enhance the speaker's self-esteem. Many engineers like to think of themselves as smart, intelligent people. So, any theory along the lines of "we're so smart - they're so stupid" is likely to be attractive because it enhances the speaker's self-esteem.

You can see this tendency in nearly any field. In astronomy the theory that the entire universe revolved around the earth (and the theorist) was mighty attractive and resistant to evidence to the contrary because it enhanced self-esteem. You see the same effect in religion and politics. People are attracted to "we're so blessed and saved - they're so cursed and unholy" theories, or "we're so good - they're so evil" theories because they enhance the speaker's self-esteem. Who doesn't enjoy thinking of themselves as being superior to others? It feels good. Just like it feels good for engineers to think of themselves as smart, intelligent people. Theories that heighten those feelings are readily accepted as being true, often self-evidently true.

There is a general lesson to be learned from this. In any field, if you develop a theory that you can see enhances your self-esteem you should be aware enough to recognize the seducing power of such theories and check and double check the thing for accuracy. Otherwise you can be a smart, intelligent person and still come to the conclusion that we should redesign customers to fit the product.

My experiences are different.

It's not that software enigineers think of customers as morons. They just don't think about them at all. Most software made today is not made by anyone who spends only the slightest fraction of his time thinking about how people wil use it, because that's not the point. The point for a software engineer is that his software works. He can see that it works by looking at cryptic logfiles, analyzing system commands and checking his UNIX-syscalls. That anybody should ever want to DO somethign with the software just doesn't matter.

Plus unfortunately today you have software development environments that make it incredibly easy for anybody to create some dialogs, a few windows and a menu bar without the slightest idea of usability.

quote:

It's not that software enigineers think of customers as morons. They just don't think about them at all.

That's not true for my company. We are a rather small outfit and our internal communications are pretty informal.

Overall, we don't let our engineers talk with customers. First, they are for the most part not very skillful in customer relations. Second, they dread doing it. They hate it. However, our Field Service people are taking telephone calls and flying off to customer installations all day every day. You can walk into our Engineering Department pretty much anytime and find field service people talking with one or another engineer about problems or improvements they feel must be made.

All this is pretty informal and goes on without input or any permissions required from the Head of Engineering or company management. There is no impediment to this flow of customer information or to the resultant solutions. It just goes on as a matter of daily routine. Of course if a solution requires a large expenditure of company resources, a change in company direction, or maybe a new product, then the engineers and field service people know enough to bring management into the conversation. That aside, if customers want or need it, and it makes sense to the engineers and field service people, they just do it.

As I said Klappy, we are a rather small company compared to large software houses. In those companies, as you point out, programmers not only never hear of how customers are doing with the stuff they design, they may not even know how the portion of the program they are working on fits into the entire scheme of things. They may have some guys in India working on one part and some guys in China working on another and none of these people care what the entire program does -just as long as their part works. Your basic code slaves. Of course we also have different engineers working on various parts of the whole, but all our engineers work in a single large area and all of them know what they are working on and how it fits with what other people are doing. They can't really avoid knowing even if they wanted to.

Just as an aside, none of our engineers resemble the "geeks" that thalo talks about. Not in manner and not physically. Our most skillful engineer is a woman that is drop dead gorgeous. She is one of these women that is so pretty that she's a bit hard to look at until you get used to her looks. At first meeting her you may be tempted to guess she makes her living from her looks, an actress or a TV personality, but the word "geek" wouldn't come to mind. Her personality isn't very geek-like either. She is enormously warm-hearted, although with a mind like a steel trap.

The engineer that I consider most skilled at user interface issues is a former computer games programmer. This guy is your basic suburban dad. His conversations revolve around stuff like little league, town meetings, and theatrical productions his kids are involved in. His looks and manner might lead you to believe he is a middle management drone, but he is both our most creative guy and the programmer with the most empathy for the end user. There is nothing geek-like about him --or any of our other engineers for that matter.

I suppose geek programmers do exist, but not in our company. They probably don't exist in any significant numbers in the large software houses either. I would guess a lot of the programmers employed by those outfits fit the category of code slave more than the category of geek.