
The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think (2016) - mooreds
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/
======
tomc1985
And this is why software sucks. We should focus on educating users, not
stooping to their level

GUIs of old had a specific design language. Like: File, Edit, Window, Help in
the menubar -- always consistent, always in the same order, and always
containing the same thing. Min/max/close buttons in the upper-right. And so
on. If one knows the GUI language they can use almost any application for many
solutions at a basic level. This knowledge is getting forgotten as "designers"
take creative steps to eliminate seemingly all thought that goes along with
software usage. Nowadays "user-friendly" software has 100 different ideas
about how to accomplish a task and it almost always involves hiding scary
things from stupid users. Which also means that when something goes wrong you
have no control over fixing it -- you're simply fucked. Unlike the past when
there was usually an option checkbox buried in a comprehensive Preferences
window, and you could disable/modify the unwanted behavior.

Ironically seemingly every app has to insult me with oftentimes unskippable
tutorials and announcements just to reveal features that should have been easy
to discover, but aren't, because the design language and UI standards have
been forgotten and/or ignored.

Extensability and control should be WAY more important than catering to the
most ignorant users.

~~~
js8
Also, in really well-designed UI of the past, every menu option had a hint in
the status bar, every GUI element had a tool tip, that explained what will
happen when you click on it.

I find modern applications (especially mobile ones) much harder to discover
and use. If you're a teen, you have plenty of time to experiment, but as an
adult, I just want to get the work done.

Yeah, you could say that I don't want to learn.. but I just want to learn bare
minimum to get the job done. The application itself doesn't have to be
minimalistic.

~~~
bakuninsbart
I think a major difference is also that for the teens of today, these apps
_are_ intuitive, if they are well designed. They take like 20 seconds to
figure everything out. It is just us oldies who grew up with mouse and
keyboard who have these problems.

~~~
asjw
I think it's just dumbing down the options.

It's recognition over recollection.

It is well known that recognition is easier, and that's why consistency help
so much.

But used everywhere, as if it was the only available tool, it makes
discoverability less safe, hence it reduces it.

If street signs are well positioned I don't need to know the route, if there
are no signs and I don't recognize the place, I'm doomed.

If an app does one thing, it's easy to remember how to do that one thing.

But if another app does the same thing in a different way, now I have to
remember two things and recall from memory which one uses which way.

~~~
whoopdedo
It's always been recognition over recollection. Users don't want to learn how
the computer works. They just want to get to their desired solution as quick
as possible. So they'll pay attention long enough to learn the correct
sequence of buttons to push that achieves that then stop there. Any change to
that mechanical process, no matter how innate to the UI it is, will be seen as
a disruption.

I used to think that UX inertia was a quality for old people not comfortable
with computers. I thought that a younger generation which grew up using
computers would be more comfortable and not show the same monkey-see-monkey-do
habits. I was wrong. I watched a teenager consistently prefer to delete by
right-clicking and selecting "Cut" instead of pressing the delete key, even
though he knew it was the same thing and would occasionally use the keyboard.
But because the "Cut" command was the first thing he learned that made an item
disappear that's what he does. This application has different actions if you
drag with left-click or right-click; he frequently confuses them. He didn't
know that you can select multiple items by holding down the shift key. This is
an honors student who has been using computers his whole life.

Other than students pursuing a computer career, this is the typical teenage
computer user. It's not that the UI is too difficult or opaque. They simply
don't care to learn more than a surface level understanding.

The objective isn't to create a world of gurus. It's to improve quality of
life for everyone. I'd certainly appreciate a computer that allows me to geek
out to my hearts content, but I am not the target audience. And the thing
about a well designed simplified interface is it's simpler and more efficient
for everyone, including the gurus. The catch is a lot of simplified interfaces
aren't so well designed.

~~~
Izkata
This may be of interest, basically the same sentiment:
[http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-
co...](http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/)

~~~
whoopdedo
I mean yes. But no.

A lot of what he says resonates with me. Except the bit about computers
needing to be difficult to encourage learning. That's the adversity-builds-
character mindset that I disagree with. The computer I learned to hack on was
a Macintosh IIsi. It wasn't bare metal like a 8-bit computer that booted into
BASIC. Nor finicky with lots of arcane configurations like a Windows 3.1
machine (and I've used both of those as well). It had all the it just works
plug-and-play that he laments in Windows 7 but as a curious kid with a hacker
mentality it served me just fine. Enough that by the time I graduated from it
I was modifying the System with hooks written in 680x0 assembly.

But the author really goes wrong, I believe, in his conclusion that the cause
of digital literacy is served by forcing users to be gurus. This is entirely
wrong and is the crux of the observation I made above. There is a myth in UX
development that programmers are targeting a conceptual user that exists
somewhere on a continuous slope between novice and power user. The article
ends with suggesting that computers be taught by setting people onto this
theoretical path. (And to be honest I think he's mistaken that this isn't what
we've already been doing and shown to not be effective.) But what if that path
doesn't exist? Then trying to teach anyone that way will be fruitless.

My thought is that there is no gradual progression. Most people are not going
to be able to learn computers the way that you and I have. So they need
different ways of using computers than what we are used to. And that will mean
a lot of disruptive ideas, which we may be suspicious of and call it "dumbing
down". But what we should be more skeptical of is our own assumptions.

So if average people want to learn computers differently than nerds do, what
we certainly don't want is to cut off the paths of discovery that lead to the
next generation of super users, hackers, and developers. Both ways need to be
preserved and encouraged to allow average users to get the most benefit of
technology, while encouraging the more in-depth learning by those who want to
be more deeply involved.

------
mquander
It frustrates me that the takeaway of this post, and the implicit conclusion
of many software designers, is "keep it extremely simple, or two thirds of the
population can’t use your design."

I think a better conclusion is "if these skills are important, design software
which aids in and rewards the development of them."

If your software is designed with some UX which is hyper-optimized to get
users to do some small handful of tasks you thought of, instead of designed as
a simple tool they can understand, then it shouldn't be surprising if users
don't learn to do anything except those tasks.

~~~
t34543
I’ve got 20 years in tech and I find products like Snapchat extremely
difficult to use. It’s NOT intuitive at all. Is it just me, or is it terrible?

~~~
fragmede
This is the information age. Just Google it. I don't meant that flippantly.
One of their best features, the Snap Map, is nigh undiscoverable. But after
seeing someone else use it and being unable to figure out how to access it,
Google was able to tell me. It's absolutely a failure of their UX but say,
what's the discoverability of regexps with and without Google? Jira also
suffers from the same problem - it's often far easier and far faster to just
Google how to do something, rather than figure out eg which particular
permissions system you want to be in, in order to be allowed to do a
particular action.

~~~
t34543
My point isn’t that I can’t figure it out, it’s that it’s painful to use.
Someone is paid to be in charge of the ui/ux, their objective is mysterious
because it’s not usability.

------
blunte
Some (many) users actively refuse to learn. There appears to be some
psychological barrier that prevents them from even trying (perhaps similar to
how some people panic at seeing any math beyond simple addition arithmetic).
That's not to say the people are stupid - many of them are relative experts in
some other domain, but yet when a computer interface is presented, they shut
off their brains.

While I find "wizard" interfaces frustratingly slow to use, I think they are a
better approach for many users. Here's a silly but not so terrible idea for an
email interface, wizard-style:

1\. "You have a new email from bob@example.com. Would you like to open it?
[Open] [Save for Later]"

2\. (opened) (display email). "Do you want to reply to Bob now? [Reply] [Do
Something Else]"

etc. etc.

This kind of interface could be handled by anyone, and it would probably work
well for people with different physical or visual challenges.

Anything more complicated than this is just beyond the willingness or
capability of most people to handle. What's really scary is that some people
operate their cars much like they operate a computer - doing unnecessary
ritualistic things that have no benefit or produce the desired outcome as a
side-effect, leaving some systems in a permanent state when they should be
enabled/disabled at different times, and so on. The tendency is to think that
people are just generally incredibly stupid (unwilling to learn, not
incapable); but perhaps it's just that our UI approach needs to actually be
two approaches - one for users, and one for refusers.

~~~
Already__Taken
Users don't read so I don't know how well this is going to pan out.

You're making the mistake thinking users are carefully operating their
machines with a purpose. It's more like being surprised by a spider, clicking
on anything that moves and if it starts bonging click shut down and try again
later before you delete your life.

/12 years tech support and have a family.

~~~
serpix
This brings back times when doing parental tech support over the phone.

"can you read what is on the screen right now"

"There is nothing on the screen!"

"there is a box on the center of your screen with words, please read them"

"OH that box.."

~~~
TeMPOraL
That's arguably consequence of the discussion being over the phone, not of it
being about computers.

In my experience, any kind of task which involves giving people instructions
is extremely frustrating when done over the phone; there's just too much
context missing, so you have to start being extra precise to compensate - but
then, most regular people aren't used to being talked to with precision, so
they start getting annoyed and push back.

The most common example I can think of is trying to explain someone over the
phone how to get somewhere, when you know the lay of the land but they don't.
A lot of frustration and useless info gets exchanged before they're even able
to communicate you where they are.

------
bonecrusher2102
It's obvious to me that this is because of the bubble that I ostensibly live
in, but this is still simply shocking data. Only 5% of people can perform more
complex tasks than finding an email with a particular sender, subject and
date? I suppose I severely take for granted and upbringing that surrounded and
supported me in learning to adapt to new tech.

It does make me wonder about the sustainability of technological growth
however. If there is such a small portion of folks that can use all of this
new tech, how far reaching can it really be? Will this divide begin to shrink?
Or stay static as one small portion of the population drifts further and
further away from the other...

~~~
Spooky23
When this came out I was skeptical and looked at transactions that I had
metrics for to corroborate with some colleagues. Not at liberty to discuss
specifics, but we all rejected the proportions that the study used.

End of the day, complex processes get completed when offered to the public,
and computer based processes are generally the norm. People somehow get
hunting licenses, navigate complex DMV processes, book transportation, and get
passports, even when they are not above average IQ.

I think if you asked these questions based on end goal rather than method,
you’d see smaller numbers of level 0/1 people.

It sounded to me like the assessment was framed around PC use — most people
don’t use PCs! I’ve seen scenarios where complex workflows delivered in social
services scenarios (where education, literacy and language competency are an
issue) where getting tasks completed in mobile (which is ubiquitous and often
more complex) is significantly better than a similar complexity task (travel
vouchers) with a professional audience on PC.

If less than 5% of the population is capable of performing complex tasks,
society would break down. Something is wrong with the assessment of complexity
or questions asked.

~~~
freeone3000
There's some technical blindness that comes with PC use. While people can
navigate complex situations fine by talking to humans, put them in front of a
user interface and they can't tell an affordance from a hole in the ground.
They're not dumb people, they just spent all their time interfacing with
humans instead of with computers, so when faced with a technical challenge
they don't really know how to start.

(I'm sure you've met people who are the inverse.)

~~~
Spooky23
There are, but based on the limited information, I remain skeptical of the
study.

The example of a difficult task was to “schedule a meeting room in a
scheduling application, using information contained in several email message”.
Many of the other examples given are email related tasks.

If you meter and study Office app use, you’ll find that features like this are
rarely invoked. For the example above, Where I have studied behavior on
significant user populations, I would guess that 5% of users book a meeting
room resource in any 30 day period, and only 2-3% do so more than once in a 30
day period. The numbers will vary in some populations, but usually you see 80%
of the booking done by a small number of people (managers and admins).

The problem with this is that the study is looking at a narrow range of office
worker tasks and applying them to the public at large. It’s an assessment of
MS Office skill sets across the population, not ability to perform complex
tasks.

There may be more depth in the paywalled study, but this article didn’t
surface it.

~~~
freeone3000
Right, but if you give that task to pretty much anyone here, they'd nail it no
prob. Even if they had to do it in Thunderbird or GCal instead of Outlook.
Heck, I'm sure I could manage it in Lotus 1-2-3. I don't think reliance on
office software or oddness of the task is in question -- and if you're saying
it's due to unfamiliarity with the software, well, that's still very bad news
for all the software writers out there.

------
dusted
Maybe it's time we stop catering to the users inabilities,and start making
software interfaces that make sense, and expect the users to adapt if they
wish to benefit. That was the expectation when I started using computers, and
it was reasonable. It not only made me faster, better, stronger, it also meant
that after passing a certain threshold, back then, I "got it", I didn't just
get that one piece of software, I had some intuition, an instinct, about how
"everything" worked.. That made all software immensely more useful to me.

That instinct is getting less useful as every application tries hard to
abandon basic concepts in favor of being intuitive, it may lower the bar
somewhat (I don't believe that), but it definitely makes applications harder
to actually use for people who used to "get it".

~~~
seer
I believe that the Rich Hickey’s mantra “simple is better than easy” applies
very well to UIs.

A lot of the times UIs try to hide complexity by making it “easy” to do common
tasks, but the underlying complexity is still there and rears its ugly head
when you inevitably bump into an edge case, then you have to learn all that
complexity (or as is often the case - rage quit).

A good example is Amazon software in general - from their shopping software to
AWS console - all great if you’ve done it before and follow their guided path,
but if you want to understand what will _actually_ happen or to do a specific
edge case well then you better have a lot of nerves and patience.

Seen a person actually brought to tears by a shopping experience were she fell
outside of a happy one click sale path and had to do some amendments, with
some significant money on the line. She just felt powerless because suddenly
an “easy” experience turned bad and now she had to understand _all_ the
minutia around sellers, shipping and refund policies.

Not a pretty sight.

Had the underlying principles been a little less convoluted, and actually
exposed, then a user could successfully navigate even some edge cases as then
he would have at least some tools at his deposal.

Right now UIs tend to drift to “click and pray” category, where you identify
what’s the several common scenarios and just cover those.

~~~
onemoresoop
The happy path is one solution in a labirynth. Once you’re off the happy path
you are navigating a labirynth in the dark. It is a very frustrating
experience. It would be useful to have a process map similar to the site maps
of the internet 2.0 times.

------
userbinator
Interesting to see that Japan both has the most "can't use computers" and
"strong" users...

I've personally observed (and had to help) many times where an otherwise
extremely intelligent person seems to completely lose his/her brain upon being
seated in front of a computer, and wonder why that is; these people can be
experts in various other fields involving significant mental ability (e.g.
maths, physics, chemistry), but when given the simplest of tasks to perform on
the computer, like those in the article, all common sense and rational
thinking seemingly disappears completely. Most people in the advanced category
probably know that a computer is "a stupid machine", but could it be the
"magical" nature of computing, and how it's often sold as, that completely
destroys their expectations?

Relatedly, I'm pretty sure the stories at
[http://rinkworks.com/stupid/](http://rinkworks.com/stupid/) are all true.

~~~
rjf72
Peruse the posts in this thread and I think you can see your answer. Many
people seem to be literally happy to accept ignorance in fields outside their
expertise. There's one exchange near the top of this thread that's been
repeated multiple times with the specifics swapped. A user suggested that
people would benefit from learning the basics of car maintenance - changing
fluids, brake pads, etc.. It's downvoted with numerous comments responded
essentially arguing 'why, when I can pay somebody else to do it?'

Those are trivial skills that take a matter of minutes to learn, and for which
there are countless step by step guides available online. I'm certain that car
mechanics have had this exact same conversation with the nouns changed about.
How can somebody who is an expert in e.g. computer science, not manage to take
a few minutes to learn how to change their fluids or pads? Skills that would
not only improve their independence and knowledge but also save them thousands
of dollars over time? And indeed even when given illustration of how to do so,
some people just seem to be arguably voluntarily incompetent. I think it's the
same thing with computers as I've observed the exact same thing, as I imagine
everybody has. Some people just don't want to learn things outside their
domain, and seem to become voluntarily incompetent when facing those problems.

~~~
balfirevic
First of all, user didn't suggest that people would benefit from learning the
basics of car maintenance but instead said that the car owners _should_ learn
how to do it.

But to get to the real point, you are talking about two different issues as if
they are one and the same. The car discussion is about not being interested in
learning some things because you can just pay someone to do it while you do
something else that you enjoy more. That it is easy to learn has nothing to do
with it.

The parent poster here is talking about intelligent people being unable to
complete basic tasks on a computer, even though they are sincerely trying to
learn how to do them and sometimes even having them explained in detail.

------
crispinb
I don't find this even slightly surprising.

I did a further degree (not tech) just a few years back at my local uni which
put me more in touch with regular, non-techy young folk than I'd had for
years. I was assured by everyone (despite their knowing that I'm a programmer)
that the digital natives would run rings around me with their mad internet &
computing skills. I've also done a fair bit of "Code Club" style volunteer
teaching at a local library.

What I find is cohorts of young people most of whom have desktops covered in
files not because they're intrinsically messy people, but because they have no
idea how to manage files elsewhere (and would lose them if they tried). And
whose internet-based research skills are no different from my 83 year old
mother's. They're more confident, and hence more willing to try things, but no
more knowledgeable. What intuitions growing up with computers has equipped
them with mostly relates to a few narrow & specialised corporate interfaces
(Facebook, Instagram et al).

Our educational institutions (here in Aus anyway) do a lousy job of teaching
people to use computers. And our computing industry's approach to human
factors is an unmitigated shitshow.

------
LanceH
What percentage fits into, "Tries right clicking things when the buttons on
top of the app don't have the immediate function"?

It's my observation that people who don't right click can't be taught to
program. (half serious)

------
tryptophan
>Instead of using live websites, the participants attempted the tasks on
simulated software on the test facilitator’s computer.

I wonder if this really lowered all the scores, because the test UI may have
been very non-standard/outdated/etc. "Simulated software" could be literally
anything and could have caused a bunch of confusion among people who are used
to certain icons and usage patterns.

~~~
userbinator
_I wonder if this really lowered all the scores, because the test UI may have
been very non-standard /outdated/etc._

...or, as may as likely be the case, very "modern". I'm confident to say that
I'm far in the "advanced user" category, also having been a developer for a
few decades, and yet I still get perplexed often by UIs with lots of hidden
functionality and confusing hieroglyphics instead of descriptive text.

~~~
baroffoos
Its also interesting how much of what we consider an "easy to use UI" actually
just means "Its what I already know".

I have been using linux with gnome for years and I recently had to use a
macbook. I wanted to change the sound settings so I opened the global app
search thing and typed "Sound" got nothing so I searched "Audio" still nothing
so I tried to find the settings app and tried "Settings" still nothing until I
remembered the settings app is called "Preferences"

The OSX UI is not hard to use, its just not the same as what I had been using
for years so even simple interactions seem difficult.

~~~
asdff
How long ago did you try this? I just tested and searching for "sound" gets me
the system preferences sound window. Searching "settings" returns system
preferences.

There was a time where apple and windows both seemed pretty stubborn with
their semantics (trash vs. recycle bin, both do the same thing, solely for
brand identity), but I think that must have died a couple versions ago.

~~~
baroffoos
This was last week but I haven't used this macbook since about 2017 so its
quite out of date.

------
KirinDave
I see a bunch of "this is why software UI sucks" things in the comments here
but did anyone read the example tasks?

> An example of level-2 task is “You want to find a sustainability-related
> document that was sent to you by John Smith in October last year.”

This varies from easy to really, really hard depending on the specifics. I
know that to do this in my specific condition I've had to do work to make it
easier, and for my academic paper collection it still doesn't work
consistently because Google OCR sowmtimes fails on older papers.

> The meeting room task described above requires level-3 skills. Another
> example of level-3 task is “You want to know what percentage of the emails
> sent by John Smith last month were about sustainability.”

Has anyone here ever, EVER asked this question about a peer? Or even a client?
I work with computers for a living and off the top of my head I'd say, "This
is incredibly annoying to do using normal tools at my disposal."

I can't help but feel like a great deal of bias went into these categorization
metrics, especially past Level 1, which artificially deflate and cluster the
resulting users into a group with skills in data processing and analysis.

I'd surely believe _that_ cohort is rare.

~~~
kaibee
> I work with computers for a living and off the top of my head I'd say, "This
> is incredibly annoying to do using normal tools at my disposal."

I think you're overthinking this. They aren't looking for a NN based solution
with sentiment analysis.

from:John Smith sustainability -> results: 300

from:John Smith -> results: 800

37.5%

~~~
KirinDave
Not only are those numbers not always right (they can contain replies), but
also that's not the question. If the questions are about keyword presence,
it's easier but it depends a lot on stuff like, "do we count attachment
content?"

~~~
mikraig
I have to agree with the other commenter, I think you're definitely
overthinking it. A keyword search is clearly what they meant for the user to
do.

They're not expecting 5% of the population to train a word2vec model and
produce prediction interval estimates. Just a simple back-of-the-envelope
check.

~~~
KirinDave
Maybe they should word the question that way then? No one is asking for using
widely criticized ML tooling.

The addition of the word "estimate" doesn't break the word budget and opens a
lot of flexibility when it comes to unfamiliar tooling. Even if we ignore
that, I reiterate: who has ever asked that question? The outlandishness of
that question surely has at least as much responsibility as the obscurity of
the UX in question or the general population's lack of education.

Personally I think most of the actual tasks have so little bearing on the
reality of the average computer user's needs I can't say I'm surprised folks
couldn't succeed. I also think this is a cognitive trap for a lot of folks
here used to being skilled computer users; becoming eager to pontificate on
why our unique insight is what's needed to "fix" the problem.

~~~
mikraig
I just think that you're focusing on the wrong things here. Towards the top of
the article they say:

> One of the difficult tasks was to schedule a meeting room in a scheduling
> application, using information contained in several email messages. This was
> difficult because the problem statement was implicit and involved multiple
> steps and multiple constraints. It would have been much easier to solve the
> explicitly stated problem of booking room A for Wednesday at 3pm, but having
> to determine the ultimate need based on piecing together many pieces of info
> from across separate applications made this a difficult job for many users.

This task isn't overly complicated. It's a task that computer-savvy people do
on a regular basis, but it complex enough that it might trip up someone who
can't use a computer well.

~~~
KirinDave
It's also a task people screw up routinely. Reliably getting a room for a
meeting in a busy building is not a solvable problem. And again, it's a
problem the vast majority of computer users simply do not and will never have.

The self-similar biasing in this study us almost ridiculous.

------
cable2600
Even with corporate training the users I worked with couldn't find out how to
do things even with a FAQ, HOWTO, F1 Help, and Help Desk helping them out. Web
and Desktop apps. Plus they requested features that already were in the
programs to be added in the next release. Which means they didn't know how to
access them.

~~~
cortesoft
Shit, I run our developer services group at my company, meaning we design and
manage tools for our own developers.

I am always shocked at how many people respond to emails asking questions that
are answered IN BOLD in the first paragraph of the email announcing a new tool
or service.

The smartest people can sometimes miss the simplest of details.

~~~
TeMPOraL
That might actually be "banner blindness". If you make something stand out
_too_ much, especially in strategic places like the very top of the message,
people will subconsciously interpret it as an advertisement, and filter it out
before it reaches their awareness.

------
kevinguh
Something I'm left wondering about is whether there is a difference in
proficiency between laptop/desktop-based apps and mobile apps. This study
seems to define a computer as a laptop or desktop machine which may've made
sense given the study started in 2011 when mobile computing was still
relatively nascent, but the time span of the study from 2011-2015 encompasses
a period of pretty expansive mobile adoption (IIRC I didn't even get my first
smartphone until 2012). Moreover, my impression is mobile penetration
outstrips that of sit-down machines (someone please correct me if I'm
mistaken) so for some demographics their primary understanding of a "computer"
could be from the perspective of a mobile device. If that is the case then
perhaps that introduces a caveat to the scoring -- mobile and desktop
experiences are quite different and someone coming to a desktop-based
interface from a mobile-first background might score more poorly on the test
than their actual level of technical proficiency would suggest.

Additionally, it seems to me that a lot of more recent interface designs seem
to converge in the overall UX. Perhaps it's a result of standards like
Material Design/Apple Guidelines and frameworks like Bootstrap and Semantic UI
being published, but whatever the reason I think it has the benefit of
reducing the learning curve for new products and making them easier to
navigate. Even though this study concluded only 4 years ago in 2015, tech
trends move fast and I personally think its measure of users' computer skills
may be a bit dated in the context of today's tech landscape. This could just
as well be my perspective from inside the bubble though, so here's your grain
of salt with all of the above

------
scarface74
Why is the result of the email test surprising? The popular meme that “email
is for old people -lol” ([https://www.huffpost.com/entry/email-is-for-old-
people-l_b_3...](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/email-is-for-old-people-
l_b_3831420)) is true. If you don’t work in an office environment, why would
most people use an email with a reply to all or schedule a meeting on a
desktop app?

People use, Slack, Facebook messenger, iMessage, AirDrop etc. Even kids often
use DropBox to turn in work or whatever Google Docs uses.

For day to day use, my wife, son and I have a shared calendar that we update
on our phone. If someone texts me a date, I just click on it to add it to a
calendar.

Even when people do respond or send an email to people in their personal life,
it’s usually to one person not a group. For groups, they will usually use a
messaging app.

~~~
Spooky23
There is a pretty steep cliff in offices too.

Even in modern Outlook on the Web, resource booking is buried in the UI —
people don’t do it.

------
AlexDragusin
DOS had it right all along with the one application at a time system when it
comes to ease of use by the general public who is likely to think in one app
at a time. The text GUIs were actually fine. It is no coincidence that it was
as successful as it was.

On top of that there were clear things such as menus, status bar tips,
shortcuts and help docs that were to be found in the same place across
programs, one would have to understand the system once and they would be
generally fine across various programs.

Now, of course, I am not suggesting we go back to DOS but I am suggesting we
take the good principles out of it and consider standardization. Windows had
it right as well up to Windows 8 when they made a mess with the tiles and all
the push towards a confusing mess (to this day, the settings app still doesn't
have proper navigation).

------
techslave
eh. that’s about what i think. and not just about computer skills.

driving skills

basic reading comprehension

the ability to think more than one step ahead

i know it’s not going to be a popular opinion, but yes most people are stupid.

~~~
AdieuToLogic
> i know it’s not going to be a popular opinion, but yes most people are
> stupid.

No, most people are not stupid. Ignorant or unskilled about many subjects?
Sure, but we all are.

Consider any speciality you like. There are those whom are Masters in it,
fluent in its nuance and implication. And yet those same Masters are novices
in most other domains. Are they stupid as well?

To put a fine point on it, consider this haiku:

    
    
      Fishermen can fish,
      But if you want a new roof,
      Hire a carpenter.

~~~
nitwit005
I wish the issue was that we all just have different specialties. I'm afraid
that some people just struggle with everything.

~~~
AdieuToLogic
> I'm afraid that some people just struggle with everything.
    
    
      Human progress is neither
      automatic nor inevitable...
      Every step toward the goal
      of justice requires
      sacrifice, suffering, and
      struggle; the tireless
      exertions and passionate
      concern of dedicated
      individuals.[0]
    

HTH

0 -
[https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/martin_luther_king_jr_164...](https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/martin_luther_king_jr_164280)

------
dmckeon
The challenge for the UI and software designers is to create interfaces that
are effective, easily learnable or intuitive, and, if possible, similar to
some interface the user is already familiar with, regardless of their skills.

------
fergie
These results seem a bit implausible

There is no obvious link to the method of the study, but the text of the study
seems to imply that these tasks are some variation of "How well can you
perform a task on a slightly outdated version of Microsoft Office", which
these days is not widely used outside of bureaucracies, and therefore likely
to be unfamiliar to most people (even for _n_x-based programmers such as
myself)

I suspect if you were to give users relatively advanced tasks related to
social media, online shopping, or device configuration you would get much more
positive results.

------
mikeash
There’s lots of discussion here about UI design and intuitive interfaces in
here, but not much about training.

Computers are, by far, the most complicated machines that people are expected
to be able to operate without any training whatsoever. Is that actually
reasonable?

It really sticks out for me in the workplace. So many jobs require computer
use. So many of the people in those jobs have no idea how to use them. They
muddle through on a combination of habit and tribal knowledge, and call for
help the moment anything different happens.

Consider jobs that require operating a car. It’s expected that someone hired
for this job already knows how to drive. If they dont, they either won’t be
hired or they’ll be required to complete training to learn how to operate this
equipment.

Yet if you replace “drive a car” with “operate a computer,” usually they don’t
care. Just try your best, and call IT for help.

Making intuitive interfaces that anyone can pick up and use is great, don’t
get me wrong. But I feel like we try to take it to impossible places.

------
PeterStuer
You would think it would follow a Pareto distribution, so how is this 'Worse
than you think"?

Now I do get the article itself is more about the level of computer literacy
rather than the distribution, and that things like the mean skill might be way
below where you think it is.

Part of my pet peeves about 'modern' systems is the indiscoverability. There
was a glorious time in between the magic incantations command line and obscure
multi key keyboard presses, and the wiz bang of of secret hand and finger
gestures, where there was a universal compact meta system of menus and dialog
boxes that while it could be extensive, allowed for browsing through all the
command option in a discoverable way (and yes, I am over-glorifying).

We somewhere seem to have lost this. It is not about the command prompt vs
menus vs gestures. It is about having a clear and universal road to discovery
when you do not know what and how some command can be given.

------
nitwit005
I'd be cautious of this sort of study. Just as many of us Google how to do
things, people can offen figure out enough to get things done with the help of
those around them. The staff at fast food restaurants and call centers
generally seem to muddle through.

Similarly, kids seem to figure out video game problems that would stump many
adults.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Video games disprove a lot of UI/UX "wisdom" by demonstrating that people
actually _do_ learn - if they care. It's often the context that makes people
not care. Do they get any personal value from caring? Can they get away with
not caring and still get the same (or same enough) results? For video games,
the answers are, in order, "yes" and "no", and so players easily learn to
operate absurdly complex interfaces, and to do it at speed.

~~~
Noos
No, all you need to disprove this is to look at the achievement rates for
beating a game. When barely 1/4 of people finish the game, which ideally is
what a developer wants, the idea that players muddle through is a bit much.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I think I've finished like 5% of the games I played with. Even counting ones
on which I spent more than 10 hours, I don't think it would be more than 10%.
Hell, I'm 241 hours into Stellaris and haven't even won one game yet; my
Kerbal Space Program hour count is four digit and you can't even win that game
:).

Point being, people don't finish games because they get their fill of
enjoyment before then. Many games I know start to feel like a chore after a
time; some early on, others near the end. Unless there's a story you
desperately want to see resolved - and many games these days ship without one
- there's little reason to play a game once you mastered all the different
mechanics it offered and seen most of the variety it featured. And then
there's multiplayer, which wouldn't even count under this metric.

I propose a different one: people who play a game with nontrivial UI for more
than 2 hours are evidence in favor. If the UI was a problem, they'd drop out
sooner. After all, unlike software used at work, nobody forces you to play a
game.

------
Someone
_”only 5% of the population has high computer-related abilities”_

Of course. If 50% could do them, they wouldn’t be called “high computer-
related skills”. Only 5% of the population has high athletics/cooking/etc.
skills, too.

 _”and only a third of people can complete medium-complexity tasks.”_

Seems like the definition of “medium-complexity” needs a small adjustment.

The message of this is “the medium is lower than you think it is”.

The good news is that what is considered medium goes up all the time.
Transferring files between computers used to require meddling with ‘standard’
RS-232 cables and Kermit. Nowadays, 3-year olds regularly do it. Retouching
photos used to be something for the 1% (and that likely is rounding up
significantly). Now, 5-year olds can do it in seconds (taste still may need
development at that age). Printing a map with the driving route from A to B?
Child’s play (but they would wonder why you would take the trouble)

------
sofayam
I know a suprising number of people 10-20 years older than me who regularly
use desktop computers but do not understand what a window is e.g.: that
windows can cover each other up, and that there are special places you must
grab or click them to either resize or move them, that you can shrink them
into a dock without closing the application etc.

Rather ironic considering that the operating system they all use is actually
named after this, for them, inscrutable abstraction.

Those guys at Apple knew what they were on to when they created iOS with its
one app at a time paradigm, even if it is slowly adding all that complexity
back in to the more recent versions.

------
dredmorbius
The data, conclusions, and implications of this are huge, and go several ways.

First: virtually _nobody_ using information technology has any idea of what
it's really doing, or how to do anything beyond a very narrow bound of tasks.
This includes the apparently proficient, and it's almost always amusing to
discover the bounds and limits in knowledge and use of computers _by the
highly capable_. Children, often described as "digital natives", are better
described as "digitally fearless": they're unaware of any possible
consequences, and tend to plunge in where adults are more reticent. _Actual
capability_ is generally very superficial (with notable exceptions, of
course).

Second: _if_ you're building for mass market, _you 've got to keep things
exceedingly and painfully simple_. Though this can be frustrating (keep
reading), there's absolutely a place for this, and for systems that are used
by millions to billions (think: lifts, fuel pumps, information kiosks),
keeping controls, options, and presentation to the absolute minimum and
clearest possible matters.

Third: Looking into the psychological foundations of intellectual capabilities
and capacity is a fascinating (and frequently fraught) domain. Direct
experience with blood relatives suggests any possible genetic contribution is
dwarfed by experiential and environmental factors. Jean Piaget's work, and
subsequent, makes for hugely instructive reading.

Fourth: If you _are_ building for general use _keep your UI and conceptual
architecture as stable as possible._ There simply is NOT a big win at UI
innovation, a lesson Mozilla's jwz noted years ago. (Safe archive link:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20120511115213/https://www.jwz.o...](https://web.archive.org/web/20120511115213/https://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/04/why-
i-use-safari-instead-of-firefox/)) Apple's Mac has seen _two_ variants of its
UI in over 35 years, and the current OSX / MacOS variant _is now older than
the classic Mac UI was when OSX was introduced_. Food for thought and humble
pie for GUI tweakers.

Fifth: if you're building for domain experts, or _are_ an expert user forced
to contend with consumer-grade / general-market tools, you're going to get hit
by this. _The expert market is tiny._ It's also subject to its own realms of
bullshit (look into the audiophile market, as an example). This is much of the
impetus behind my "Tyranny of the Minimum Viable User", based in part on the
OECD study and citing the Nieman-Neilsen group's article:

[https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/69wk8y/the_tyr...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/69wk8y/the_tyranny_of_the_minimum_viable_user/)

(I've been engaged in a decades-long love-hate, and increasingly the latter,
battle with information technology.)

Absent some certification or requirements floor (think commercial and general
aviation as examples), technical products are displaced, and general-market
wants will swamp technical users' needs and interests.

~~~
techslave
> Second: if you're building for mass market, you've got to keep things
> exceedingly and painfully simple.

Not the primary reason, but anyway one of the reasons google+ failed.

~~~
dredmorbius
There are plenty to choose from.

It helps to rmember that as a rule, _all but one_ mass-market social
networking platform will fail. "Success" means "claiming the most mindshare".
And if you're in the mass market, that means there's only _one_ brass ring.

Any roadblocks or injuries, self-inflicted or otherwise, toward attaining that
goal will not help you. Google+ certainly had much help inside and out in
failing to attain that mark.

Paradoxically, this is why aiming for a _specific niche_ can be a success, at
least on its own terms. Reddit, Twitter, and Hacker News qualify on this
basis.

Facebook is now actively competing against not only other comers, but itself
(WhatsApp, etc.) in various guises. A battle it will all but certainly,
eventually, lose.

------
mirimir
So this is sub level 1:

> An example of task at this level is “Delete this email message” in an email
> app.

But it's probably at least level 3 to realize that actually deleting email
messages is impossible.

------
cm2187
What do they mean by "sort function"?

------
AdieuToLogic
This reminds me of an oft referenced quote:

    
    
      Any sufficiently advanced technology
      is indistinguishable from magic.[0]
    

What may not be immediately obvious from the wisdom bespoken by Arthur C.
Clarke is that given enough technology, all of us will eventually find a point
where we believe magic truly exists.

0 -
[https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/arthur_c_clarke_101182](https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/arthur_c_clarke_101182)

~~~
spc476
I'll see that, and raise you a quote: "Anything that is in the world when
you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the
world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-
five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career
in it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order
of things." \--Douglas Adams

~~~
AdieuToLogic
I see your Douglas Adams quote and raise you an Albert Einstein quote:

    
    
      Common sense is the collection of
      prejudices acquired by age eighteen.[0]
    

:-D

0 -
[https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/albert_einstein_125365](https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/albert_einstein_125365)

------
benologist
This is where open source is an unsung hero continually advancing not just the
computer skills but the really advanced stuff. This study finds only 5% of
adults can do what they call complex tasks like navigating and filling out
forms in a browser, while 69% could barely work for Uber, barely use Uber, or
not even figure out Uber. Open source is sitting there teaching and training
people how to create Uber.

~~~
vortico
I fail to see what open-source software has to do with this data. If someone
is unable to move their mouse pointer to the Delete icon of an email client,
the license of the software likely has no effect.

~~~
benologist
Learning how to use, configure and create open source is definitely one of the
highest-proficiency forms of computer usage. Especially creating but even
using open source requires a bevvy of advanced skills identifying appropriate
software and getting it to run. The strongest 5% of computer users they found
can barely search email and some % are pursuing incredibly sophisticated
skills through open source setting up their own email server or writing one.
That's the relevancy.

This study stopped counting at 3rd level with multipage forms basically...
what’s a Linux terminal or git or swift or json/yaml configuration files if
not _highly advanced computer usage_. 3rd, 4th, 5th, 100th, somewhere up there
is a proficiency-level where you build your own computer in Minecraft for the
fun of it and write languages and operating systems and these skills are
learned and shared through open source more than anything.

I think if they had kept tracking the higher levels of proficiency by the time
they got to open source users and developers there is a chasm between their
ability to use computers to solve problems vs the 3rd-level person - data
munging, web scraping, scripting, machine learning, advanced internet
searching, bespoke software...

~~~
AdieuToLogic
> Learning how to use, configure and create open source is definitely one of
> the highest-proficiency forms of computer usage.

Some of the most successful accountants, CFO's, and stakeholders I have met
would beg to differ.

> I think if they had kept tracking the higher levels of proficiency by the
> time they got to open source users and developers there is a chasm between
> their ability to use computers to solve problems vs the 3rd-level person ...

This is a straw man argument[0]. OSS != "higher levels of [computer]
proficiency".

0 -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man)

~~~
benologist
Look at the steps to set up WordPress. These steps can impart a lot of
knowledge on the people following them. There are classical models of learning
that seem very applicable - learning by doing, experiential learning and rote
learning. The article is very clear society doesn't make highly proficient
computer users, so if using open source doesn't create them where could they
possibly be coming from?

\- domain registration

\- web hosting

\- put Wordpress on the hosting

\- configure Wordpress

[https://www.shivarweb.com/website-setup](https://www.shivarweb.com/website-
setup)

~~~
AdieuToLogic
Solving problems can be done in many ways. I reach first for OSS myself, but
that's just me. Others solve the problems they must with tools which are not
OSS.

What matters most is solving the problem at hand, not what tools are used.

I'm just a random Internet account, trying to impart a bit of perspective. Do
with it what you shall.

