Big Tech routinely vastly overestimates the level of understanding that most of their users have of technology -- including websites, devices, security, reliability, and all the rest. Help forums are generally useless or worse. Help documents are typically written at levels beyond the understanding of most users. This is why so many users are being left behind, and why so many of them suffer catastrophic account lockouts and data losses, that Big Tech generally considers to be unimportant.
It's a lost skill - being able to FORGET - forget all you know about how the inner details work, and write instructions that make sense to a (justifiably ignorant) first-time user.
The pervasive lack of that skill is why we get "...to set the hour, just press FF - FF - FF - REV - REV then hold PLAY until the clock blinks..."
@video_manager @lauren A large chunk of this issue is probably due the the curse of knowledge. The people paying the bills assume that documents meant for devs/engineers (which may or may not be accurate or complete) just need a once over before they're shoved at the public. But even if a tech writer gets involved, they need the time and space to produce something that is actually comprehensible, versus a pretty polish with pics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge
@MaryLacroix @video_manager @lauren Yes, thank you! I once co-taught a course in Computer Science for Undergrads Who Definitely Aren't Going to Major In It, aka computers for poets. It was VERY DIFFICULT to explain, say, bits as a new concept, after being steeped in the concept for a few decades.
@lauren my mother (84) is regularly and utterly confused by what Google wants to tell her.
@masek So are a lot of people a lot younger!
@lauren @masek A few years ago I tried to teach my father (now 98) to use an iPad so we could use FaceTime for video calls. It never worked because, to my surprise, the usability is TERRIBLE. It's full of hidden states (swipe-up quits the app, unless it scrolls instead), driven by a vocabulary of gestures that you Just Have To Know. Frustrating to teach, MISERABLE to try to learn from a standing start.
@Haldane @lauren The usability of iPad and iPhone is surprisingly bad for a senior. Unluckily it is still 100 times better than Android or MS Windows.
Switching my parents to Apple reduced the support effort on my and my brothers side by an order of magnitude. But for my parents using any kind of IT is still like a visit in hell.
We have to prepare something like a cheat sheet for every kind of action.
Maybe this is one of the few areas the AI may bring a real improvement if it allows a real dialog between user and device.
@masek @lauren FWIW, Dad has no problem working an Amazon Echo for video calls. Part of the secret is that the Echo has a limited range of function, so it doesn't have to cons up a layered, overloaded, baroque control language. Just poke the ANSWER button to accept an incoming call.
Also, it helps that it's free-standing, there's no need to hold it steady while poking at the screen as with a tablet.
@lauren @masek Also, a recurring frustration is race conditions in UIs. You're doing a task, the next step is to hit an affordance on a screen. After you commit to poking the button or whatever, the screen changes. Maybe the affordance moves, maybe it turns into a different action, whatevs, but by the time you activate the affordance, it does the wrong thing.
Not obvious how to fix this.
@lauren I don't doubt the first part is true, but I find documents & error messages these days the opposite. They all amount to "something went wrong and it's unknowable to your puny mortal brain, so too bad you're fucked" rather than giving you any starting point to understand what's wrong and fix it.
@dalias @lauren All modern documentation has only two modes,
"To implement a custom CFD solver, remember that Frob frobbles frobbables using the Omega Mu bistatic convention adopted by Klorzen [87]"
And
"The computer had a whoopsie, so try again later or ask someone for help."
There is no middle ground, and all the technical writers got fired 30 years ago so it's all written by devs who know too much or interns who know nothing."
@wrosecrans @lauren I don't think it's interns. It's condescending tech bros.
@lauren I think that modern software is designed with deliberate anti-patterns. My wife is going through her MacBook today to try to understand what iCloud and Apple Music have done to her file organization. She keeps going back to her decade old Linux device, and as much as I'd like her to be able to run the work project I'm working on, I'm this close to "fuck it, let's move your new computer from MacOS to Linux".
@lauren @carl I’ve come to use LLMs for helping family and friends with tech tuff. Help them help themselves by explaining in their own words or via uploading a picture or… into my paid ChatGPT+account. Take some time to explain what AI can and cannot do while interacting with them. Works so much better than just solving the problem for them or telling them to google