if you think the users are stupid, then you are letting your own arrogance reduce your own ability to analyze the problem space fully.
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now, I will grant, for those of us who grew up dealing with asshole elders who refused to even consider learning how to interact with computers and demanded things "just work" that were wholly unreasonable, yeah, the 80s, '90s, and early '00s sucked.
get over it.
the fucking boomer dipshits are dying off, and a bunch of zeds and alphas are growing up with an ecosystem that's completely fucked for any attempt to learn on their own.
perhaps fix things for them instead of assuming they magically had access to magazines with BASIC listings and permissive environments where experimentation was at least tolerated, instead of being given a fucking menuless UI on a locked-down kiosk with fuck AI search results either refusing to give them necessary knowledge because it's "Hacking" or telling them to snort glue?
@munin I routinely have to remind a (very smart, terminally online) friend that we do not shame people for taking the path of least resistance and just using a computer in its default configuration with the web browser that was shoved in their face and no fancy pants extensions.
Yes we can try to educate (depending on our relationship) but we first have to acknowledge that the fact that the default state of computers is terrible is an indictment on the corporations that sell them, not an indictment of their users.
Imagine if you bought a new car, and you (yourself, not a mechanic) had to install seat belts and airbags and ABS and a number of other safety systems before even driving it off the lot in order to get car insurance. Sounds stupid, right?
And yet, that is what we somehow expect of ordinary users, and I am so, so tired of terrible defaults.
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@munin I routinely have to remind a (very smart, terminally online) friend that we do not shame people for taking the path of least resistance and just using a computer in its default configuration with the web browser that was shoved in their face and no fancy pants extensions.
Yes we can try to educate (depending on our relationship) but we first have to acknowledge that the fact that the default state of computers is terrible is an indictment on the corporations that sell them, not an indictment of their users.
Imagine if you bought a new car, and you (yourself, not a mechanic) had to install seat belts and airbags and ABS and a number of other safety systems before even driving it off the lot in order to get car insurance. Sounds stupid, right?
And yet, that is what we somehow expect of ordinary users, and I am so, so tired of terrible defaults.
"do not punish the behavior you wish to encourage" is a pretty useful concept to introduce people to.
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"do not punish the behavior you wish to encourage" is a pretty useful concept to introduce people to.
@munin also “make doing the right thing easy” (other side of the same coin perhaps?)
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@munin also “make doing the right thing easy” (other side of the same coin perhaps?)
it's the same picture
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now, I will grant, for those of us who grew up dealing with asshole elders who refused to even consider learning how to interact with computers and demanded things "just work" that were wholly unreasonable, yeah, the 80s, '90s, and early '00s sucked.
get over it.
the fucking boomer dipshits are dying off, and a bunch of zeds and alphas are growing up with an ecosystem that's completely fucked for any attempt to learn on their own.
perhaps fix things for them instead of assuming they magically had access to magazines with BASIC listings and permissive environments where experimentation was at least tolerated, instead of being given a fucking menuless UI on a locked-down kiosk with fuck AI search results either refusing to give them necessary knowledge because it's "Hacking" or telling them to snort glue?
@munin@infosec.exchange they are still alive and kicking in some places, but even then you can occasionally break through if the timing is right
never gets old, being able to educate people and have them understand what are relatively complex concepts if you just talk to them in the right way
fairly sure my many years of helping beginners with programming with varying degrees of english have given me a large leg up compared to my peers -
if you think the users are stupid, then you are letting your own arrogance reduce your own ability to analyze the problem space fully.
users do things that make sense to them in the moment. failure to understand the context where an action -makes sense- and is thus the correct action to choose is a skill issue on your part.
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have you -seen- the world that they're experiencing now?
shit, the modern mobile OSs don't even want to acknowledge that filesystems exist in the UI. how the shit is a kid supposed to learn the "correct" way to do things in this situation?
@munin Yes.
Working helpdesk support with the intent of trying to find solutions that work well both for the user and the company really opens your eyes to this shit.
Sometimes users are lazy, yes, but never stupid. Pretty much anything anything people chalk up to stupidity is users following patterns they've often been forced into for years.
I will say there are sometimes no-win situations, where in order to act correctly a user would need to have knowledge that they just simply have absolutely no incentive to learn. But that's usually the company's fault.
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