The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think
www.nngroup.com
Across 33 rich countries, only 5% of the population has high computer-related abilities, and only a third of people can complete medium-complexity tasks.

via Michiel

Friends of my generation who weren’t in families with a computer they could play around on have ended up far less comfortable with tech. I would love to see data like this broken out by class background.

I suspect companies have historically been overvalued based on what a techie user could get out of them rather than their intended user. Does this happen with phone apps too?

Are there modes of instruction that help people advance in these skills? They seem like they ought to have a lot of impact, and yet I don’t think I see training around me.

How does good/bad UI design impact this?

  • monobot
    5·
    4 years ago

    When watching non techy friends use phones and computers,I just see how cluttered and non consistent GUIs really are. And changing with each version.

    I hate uodating because something will change. Worst offender by far is OsmAnd, great application with awful UI, but even worser is they change it all the time and I can not even learn it and get used to it after years of use.

    Most aplications, desktop, mobile and web havr a lot of options 90% of users don’t want to see or use. Solution might be to make simplified and complex UI for each software and mke simplified and consistent UI as default and easy switch to change it to complex and custom.

    I don’t think this is user fault, I do think this is just bad decision making on all levels of application design.

    After helping them with, to me, unknown applucation people usualy ask me “How did you know where to find that option?” and my answer is “I would put it there.” and I am certainly not a person to male any kind of decision on UI side of things.

    tl;dr: UI bad.