Headed for Extinction?
by AlexaI’ve been wanting to blog about this topic since Christmas — when I was home with my relatives, desperately trying to explain things like…
The concept of opening two windows side by side to move things from one to the other… Look, you can move the window by clicking on the title bar! If the window is covering your whole screen, don’t panic, just use the handles to resize it… Oh, and to move the picture file, don’t drag the preview – drag the icon.
Why a 404 Page Not Found error is not a serious computer problem, it probably just means you typed the URL wrong… (and why I can just blithely ignore about half the errors Windows gives me, when the simplest of error can have my mom writing it out, character for character, to investigate later).
It felt like the popular writing class where you’re trying to describe how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to aliens who have never seen one before. You can’t assume anything.
I vaguely remember playing with an interactive tutorial that came with Windows 3.1 that introduced the brand new “windows” concept and let you practice “minimizing” and “drag and drop.” It’s easy to forget, but there are people today — even our peers, people of the same age (20 and 30-somethings) and demographic as Adaptive Pathers — who haven’t established these basic mental models. And because of this, they’re afraid to experiment or to try things.
What can be done for these people?
Should anything be done?
In school, I suggested to a professor that I do a project focused on these people. But he discouraged it, saying:
“To put it bluntly — these people are dying out. The current generation grew up on computers. Designing for these people won’t be a need for much longer.”
Then the other day, Jared Spool was chatting with us. To make a point, my co-worker, Chiara, cited her brother’s — a 30-something with young kids — recent revelation: “Did you know that you can search for homes on the internet???” She went on to say that her brother doesn’t even use email — he just doesn’t see the value of it. Jared replied:
“But do we need to design for these people? I hate to say it, but your brother will eventually die.”
I’m not sure I agree. Are these really only edge cases that we can dismiss or laugh off? Our 30-something peers are still going to be around for more years than the internet has even been in existence. Chiara’s brother and my in-laws aren’t living out in the wilderness. And surely we designers have something to offer — if we’re in the business of improving the human experience — even to people who ARE living in the wilderness.
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April 4th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
A writer does not write for the illiterate.
A designer for interactivity should not design for the computer-illiterate.
If books and the publishing industry had evolved with the illiterate in mind we’d only have flash-cards and “See Spot Run” to read today.
The computer-illiterate won’t disappear any more than the traditionally illiterate have. We shouldn’t design for them but we should support efforts to minimise their numbers.
Or just ignore the ignorant bastards. Whichever you prefer.
April 4th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
What are you supposed to say to the “they’re gonna die” argument? “Hey, how about we KILL all those users NOW? That would make things so much simpler.”
When I hear people say things like “we should not design for the computer illiterate”, I think of how profoundly “illiterate” I am in terms of so many other things:
I am almost completely ignorant as how television actually works, but I like to watch TV. I am also glad that Apple and Microsoft didn’t make me understand how an Intel Core Duo chip works just so I can do something SIMPLE like design a website. I have no damn idea how an internal combustion engine actually works–though I rely on them every day. Frankly, I am almost totally illiterate in terms of so many things I rely on on a daily basis it’s shocking. Thank goodness no other industry holds it against me.
April 4th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
“I am almost completely ignorant as how television actually works, but I like to watch TV.”
You don’t know how an engine works but you know how to drive. I don’t know how to bind a book, but I like to read them. Lacking in specialisation isn’t illiteracy. To conflate those two is a category error.
Illiteracy is a lack of education — ignorance — which prevents a person from participating in a basic activity and many everyday situations.
How about putting it this way: The car industry’s goal shouldn’t be to design cars for those that can’t drive. Those who can’t drive are by definition not a part of the car industry’s market. They have to resort to other transportation industries for their needs.
The computer illiterate will have to get their information from other media and, like the traditionally illiterate or those who cannot drive, when they have to deal they will have to ask someone to help them.
The computer illiterate are, by definition, not a part of our industry’s market.
Unless they pull themselves out of their ignorance, if you think that’s likely.
April 4th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
Hmm… You do have a good point, Baldur. But what would you say to someone who says, “I don’t want to ‘learn computers.’ I just want to share photos with my family!” (Is that equivalent to saying, “I don’t want to learn to drive, I just want to get places quickly and whenever I want”?)
I think it depends on the product you’re putting out, too, and who you want to reach. Say you’re designing an application to help diabetes patients manage their health. Should only the computer-literate be able to benefit from such a tool?
April 4th, 2007 at 11:30 pm
I think that this is an area of design worth exploring. Like Baldur said with the book analogy, not every book can be a Dick and Jane book. However, that doesn’t mean that we should eliminate children’s books.
In the same respect, we don’t need to make every design for the computer-illiterate, but that doesn’t mean that we should never design for them. Technorati can probably get by assuming a certain level of literacy because it’s a website that caters to a technical audience. Now look at WebMD.com. It’s incredibly over-complication and even a little tricky for me to navigate. It was difficult to watch my great aunt, who’s a college graduate and quite sharp, almost in tears trying to find out information about her heart condition.
In the end it’s all about understanding your entire audience not just a 5 person focus group.
April 5th, 2007 at 3:07 am
That is an excellent point and answers Alexa’s point above it better that I ever could.
April 5th, 2007 at 3:14 am
[...] wonders whether computer illiterate users should be a factor in user experience design. [Link] Are these really only edge cases that we can dismiss or laugh off? Our 30-something peers are still [...]
April 5th, 2007 at 8:35 am
It sounds like Spool and Baldur assumes designing for these people means dumbing down the design. Which I think is the wrong angle.
You would be surprised how much universal design benefits everyone (both on-line and off line).
At the recent IA summit, a speaker suggested we should design for good behaviours, not good causes.
I relate this to:
Universal design = designing for good behaviours;
Dumbing down a UI = designinig for good causes.
April 10th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
You don’t need to “dumb down” the design of anything. You need to design applications that serve the needs of the people who are using them. An automotive engineer wants to design better vehicles, not become an expert in using Windows or whatever platform they are designing on. The fact that this engineer may not be good at navigating through a Windows environment is not the engineer’s problem, it is Microsoft’s problem and is, really, the whole point behind designing applications so that people can use them. He won’t be dead for a long time and if Microsoft doesn’t want him to be bad mouthing their software for the next 40 years, they better do something about it. And fast.
The simple fact of the matter is that as technology reaches the masses designers must recognize that a greater portion of users are users because they have to be, not because they want to be, and all they really want to do is accomplish their task and go home in their 1978 Ford Pinto. People can’t design for early adapters any more, because most software has gone beyond that stage.
April 12th, 2007 at 9:40 am
Thinking that these people are dying out anytime soon is just arrogant. Yes, we techie people sit in extremely advanced countries where we’ve had an email address for years and are rarely more than an arm’s length away from a computer. And yes, our children will have the same and more of it. But there’s still a surprisingly high number of people in our own countries who have never owned a computer. And if we look beyond our own borders, the digital literacy rate is considerably lower, and growing in many cases only slowly.
Unless your target audience is clearly defined as geeks, you’re well-advised to at least try and make your app/site/whatever usable by those with far less understanding than yourself.
April 17th, 2007 at 10:22 am
Grr! Alexa’s mother is not happy being grouped among the computer-illiterate. I think for my mature age, I’m ahead of most of my peers. I don’t actually recall that at Christmastime I didn’t instinctively know that the Error 404 Page Not Found wasn’t a major concern, although there was a time that was true. I do sometimes write out exact error messages and I think that’s because I read to do that, probably in an NIS document.
My point of view on this discussion is that I think a computer should be designed to be as easy to operate as the automobile - it’s very close to being almost as essential. There are people who get along without one just as there are people who manage without a car (and some of these because they lacked the “mental models” for driving), but we all have to get around. I use and depend on my computer 24/7, for accounting/banking, shopping, cooking, education, research, communication, pleasure, creative pursuits, documenting. Please keep me in mind when you design!