

You Aren't Average - byrneseyeview
http://www.seobook.com/you-arent-average

======
RiderOfGiraffes
This was posted some time ago, and the comments there are interesting:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=662105>

I said in <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=662151> :

    
    
      More and more, producers of programs are hiding the
      details, making it easier for people to just get on
      with things and solve their problems, without having
      to worry about the details of how it happens, and the
      machinery underneath.
    
      Then others, no doubt technical people, go and interview
      the users in order to show just how ignorant they all are.
    
      Did I get that right?
    
      If you want to make computers and services easy to use,
      you don't want people to be able to answer these questions.
      You want people to find your service, use it, and remain
      completely unaware of the technology.
    

So while it's true that you are not average, the ignorance these people are
showing is exactly the ignorance being given to them, forced on them, by
makers of programs. And said makers are proud of that - their programs are
"easy to use" and "intuitive."

Don't laugh and deride people for becoming exactly what you make them become.
Be proud that you've done your job so well that they don't know what a browser
is.

Why should they know? Everything is "intuitive."

~~~
bad_user
I worked on the online strategy of a non-profit campaign in my country.

The people I worked with were really smart, but when it came to writing web
articles other people could read, they were blissfully ignorant.

The CMS I built had an intuitive interface with a WYSIWYG editor. I made the
choice to have less functionality than TinyMCE because their already written
articles were terrible ... no correct alignment, no intuitive paragraphs,
verbose sentences that could make you yawn from the first 5 seconds, content
that used medical jargon, and complete disregard for their audience.

I tried to write them emails explaining to them what one should or shouldn't
do when publishing to the web. I trained them face to face. No effect.

I later discovered that they copy/pasted the documents from MS Word. The
copied text carried over Word's formatting, and because it didn't look like in
Word, they tried to make it look better by visual editing, or by totally
ignoring the results.

One day I deactivated the WYSIWYG editor, telling them that they should learn
HTML. Enough to say that they were so upset that I'm now no longer helping
them with anything.

I'm not even talking about using technology here. I'm talking about basic
skills you need when writing a clear essay ... kids are supposed to learn this
stuff in school.

This is not necessarily about people being trained by us to be ignorant. This
is something more deeper than that ... people are becoming lazier and more
ignorant and disconnected from their work and the world at large. Maybe it's
information overload. Maybe it's the paradox of choice. I don't know.

------
robotrout
"Why did you switch to Firefox?"

"My friend came over to my house, deleted all my other browsers, and said
"You're using Firefox now"

Classic! That's a good friend. How often have I wanted to do the same thing!

~~~
unalone
I gave my grandfather Chrome and renamed it to Internet Explorer. It worked.

As an aside, the Firefox 3.6 beta came out recently and it might be the first
Firefox on the Mac that doesn't suck. I was very pleasantly surprised.

~~~
dtf
I've been very impressed with Firefox on the Mac, as I find Safari terribly
buggy and unresponsive. It should really use the Camifox (Camino) theme as
default though.

~~~
unalone
The theme still disappoints me. Camino's not much better; Safari still beats
anything on the Mac (I'm still using it as my default). But they finally added
smooth scrolling, which was the major killer for me earlier. It made using
Firefox a pain.

------
jlees
That video is a little frightening. However I wonder how Scott introduced
himself. "I'm from Google, do you know what a browser is?" may be a slightly
leading question if the audience is already unsure.

We often live in happy little techie bubbles where perhaps the only clueless
intruder is our grandma or uncle, this video does remind us we should get out
once in a while and talk to real people who use AOL broadband and have never
heard of Google Crown.

Unfortunately, the rest of the article is pretty obvious once you've realised
not everyone's as clued up as you are. Lowest common denominator. Next!

------
heyitsnick
"asked 50 people on the street [...] Less than 8% of people surveyed did."

Wait, less than exactly 4 people? So 3 people? So exactly 6%?

~~~
nostrademons
It's possible that "50 people" was an approximation, and he actually asked
"somewhat more than 50"...

------
chrischen
I'm starting to see why all those internet scammers make money.

~~~
jrockway
Yes. The solution is education, not dumbing everything down. If you treat
people like they're dumb, they will act the part.

~~~
thras
Yeah, because education is _so_ effective.

~~~
jrockway
Not for you, I guess.

~~~
thras
You had the choice between attacking my statement by citing a few successful
public education campaigns (there aren't many) or attacking me.

You attacked me. Wonderful way to convince others about your point.

~~~
jrockway
The lack of a successful "education campaign" does not mean that education is
a bad idea. It just means we haven't done it right yet.

~~~
lolcraft
And probably won't. Look at this loud minority of people who text while
driving, think the EM field will give them cancer, are opposed to nuclear
energy... I suggest the government to allow people get scammed, _do_nothing_
about it. Abolish laws against fraud; people will be more careful, knowing
there's no saving net at the end.

~~~
jrockway
Let's also legalize murder. If you make someone mad enough to kill you, you
deserve to die. Society doesn't need a "safety net".

------
iron_ball
So what they're saying is, the least computer-literate people use non-Google
search engines, and are more gullible. Deeply discouraging. Sure, if you run a
startup, you want to get people to give you money, so this is probably grand
news: let's check the referrer logs and give Bing users a giant flashing ad
that tells them they're the 1,000,000th visitor! But as someone who wants to
users move forward in general, it's pretty damn sad.

~~~
stakent
It gives us a flash of reality.

We have to face the reality and act accordingly. Our A/B testing will tell us
which course of action is better.

------
rooshdi
These two quotes resonate with me the most and describe what we should all
strive for in our online services:

"Your website design should ask nothing more of the user than a car does.
Assume nothing, other than the user will point and click something obvious."

"Skype. Amazon. Ebay. All the big, successful internet plays took an everyday
task the user already undertakes, and puts that task in an online context."

~~~
eru
Cars are sometimes quite unintuitive. A lot of website do a better job.

------
stakent
Nobody is his own target group.

Well, almost. Eat own dog food ... etc.

But sticking to this approach limits severely size of target population.

Throwing mud at the wall and finding what sticks. It has one major
disadvantage. It costs in time and money.

Any solutions?

Maybe Customer Development and Agile. Maybe something else.

The question is still open.

------
byrneseyeview
This is written about SEO, but applies about as well to anyone else involved
in selling things online.

------
bisceglie
i have no earthly idea what point this post is trying to convey. if it's a
reactionary post to the anti-seo sentiments expressed by developers, it fails.
is the future of SEO in user-experience? is this post aimed at seo
practitioners? regardless, i call bullshit.

------
AndrewDucker
I may not be average, but <http://mylifeisaverage.com/>

~~~
AndrewDucker
And I'm sorry, but I just couldn't resist that.

