[rosseloh]

On phone support calls I usually can't even get people who know what a URL, URL bar, or even a search bar, is in the first place.

"The box at the top where you type in websites you want to go to."

"What are you talking about? I'm computer illiterate, I can't learn any of this fancy tech stuff. I just click my facebook icon and it comes up!"

These people get all sorts of confused when something happens in their browser and the new tab page's recently visited list gets cleared out...

[3np]

> I'm computer illiterate, I can't learn any of this fancy tech stuff.

This learned helplessness scares me a bit. It's like the willingness to comprehend stops at "tap".

"What are you talking about, 'steering wheel'?! I'm not a greasemonkey, are you talking about the thing I turn to make the car turn?"

Not knowing is one thing, refusing to take in any new knowledge is another.

[danShumway]

There are a lot of things that contribute to learned helplessness, but in my opinion one underrated cause (for computers) is lack of security.

Particularly with touchscreens, it's really easy to break settings or delete something if you're doing something fiddly. I think people underestimate how powerful concepts like the recycling bin are, history, etc... in making people feel a bit more confident about experimenting.

How to translate that stuff to completely computer-illiterate people is a big challenge. But my experience is that when people feel like it's really easy to revert mistakes, they tend to experiment more and they tend to be bolder about trying to solve their own problems. And in the opposite direction, as they learn more that computers are dangerous even in specific areas, that can bleed over into other contexts and make them scared of trying things in other programs and with other devices.

When I see people who aren't willing to try and figure out what a URL bar is or who are scared to move files around or organize a directory or bookmarks, I sometimes wonder what the rest of their computer looks like and if they're channeling anxieties with other programs.

Of course, that's only one aspect of the problem though, it's an issue with multiple causes.

[xyzelement]

> This learned helplessness scares me a bit... Not knowing is one thing, refusing to take in any new knowledge is another.

As a matter of personal philosophy, I agree - but on the level of "empathy for users" this misses the mark pretty widely.

The 'steering wheel' analogy is not applicable (but funny!) because unlike computers, everyone who drives has been licensed so there's a baseline level of education that isn't there for computing. Also, most people (at least in the US) grew up around cars, so you expect a 20 year old and a 70 year old to grasp what a steering wheel is. But likely the people you are making fun of here did not grow up with computing. They are older folks to whom the computer was presented as a way to solve some specific problem (eg: a series of clicks so I can zoom with the grandkids) rather than a general platform that you perceive it as.

You can still say "well, there's a computer now in your life so you should learn about that" and again personally I agree, but - you gotta admit there are things in your life that you could go deeper on but you simply aren't comfortable or interested in doing so. For example, do you know the anatomy of every muscle in your body? Are you perfectly comfortable with public speaking? Are you able to articulate the nuances of policy difference between two local politicians running for office in your area? These are examples of things that you come in contact with on daily basis, and (if you are like most people) you probably did not go as deep in on as you could (and arguably should). Even if you happen to be good at these specific things you can get the larger point that people don't and can't go "deep" on everything they encounter. It may seem weird to you that to someone that thing is their computer, but those people may know things that you don't, also.

[pkulak]

It feels to me like they're scared to try, because they still might not get it, and then what does that say about them? But dammit, if my relatives just tried, even a little bit, things would be so much better.

[asdff]

It's really because most adults don't have time to tinker like we did, being children and adolescents with computers. When I grew up in the windows xp era, I became the family tech support, and not because I was smart or anything. Just because I had time on my hands, being a child with little responsibilities compared to my parents, to go through the control panel and click every single button and option just to see what it did, so when something did go wrong I had some idea to guess where the fix was to be found. Honestly, I'm surprised I didn't mess things up more often. Fast forward to today, and there is a lot of common software that I struggle with like my parents did 20 years ago because I don't have the time to fiddle like I did 20 years ago. I can't do much of anything on windows anymore, after years of using macos and unix, that knowledge has left my brain and I don't have the time to get it all back.

[HelixEndeavor]

As self-driving cars come closer to reality, I fear your hypothetical will eventually become a real conversation someone will have to unironically have.

[cblconfederate]

Tech has gone to great lengths to convince people to be illiterate. "There's an app for that" was the worse form of handicap and users were heavily incentivized to seek premade solutions rather than trying to solve their own problems

[JohnWhigham]

People get old and obstinate. It's sad but at the end of the day, they choose to be like this.

[thrashh]

Pretty much everyone is like this somewhere though. Not many people eagerly learn in every domain.

[ronenlh]

I had a computer illiterate boss once. He said “please understand it, I’m disabled”

[nend]

Family members for me, but they don't understand the difference between the windows search box in the task bar (next to the "start" button), and google. The difference between Chrome and google.com is lost on them as well.

It's a good exercise in patience for me while we go through the steps of describing the differences between searching for things on your computer vs searching for things on the internet, what google is, etc.

They've been using the internet since I was a kid in the 90's.

I'm sure most of us have examples of this in our lives, being the de-facto "computer person" in the family. It is what it is at this point. For whatever reason, if you didn't grow up with computers, it's incredibly difficult to understand them as an adult. Which still applies to huge swaths of the worlds population.

[jeffasinger]

Interestingly, I think we're seeing less people grow up with general purpose computers, and instead just have an iPad or an android tablet, or a chromebook.

I wonder what things will look in 20 years.

[xattt]

I wonder if there’s any stories of anyone suddenly becoming technoliterate after feigning ignorance after a number of years.

[benhurmarcel]

At some point those people would be happier with an iPad or Chromebook really, where they wouldn’t need to think about what’s local or not.

[baktubi]

The browser has a search bar at the top of the page; Amazon has a search bar at the top of the page.

Ergo it’s actually bad UX design. Thinking desktop UX if that was an “Amazon app” there would be ONE singular search bar.

To make matters worse, Windows has a search bar in start (usually at the bottom); browser has a search bar (at the top); some websites have their own search bar; file explorer has its own search bar.

You get the point: bad UX design enforced by assumptions made at each layer of the OS/browser/website. Many out of the control of users and developers alike. Nonetheless, it’s overcrowding the UX with redundancy.

Historically speaking, users had an ability to “find stuff” on their system but it was never by an implicit “search bar”; users had to explicitly do something like: file -> find prior to entering search query.

The web browser was the one with the search bar (having one job: entering URLs not search terms) and when websites had a search feature it was typically placed in the middle of site or somewhere else (typically reserved for search terms).

Modern UX can be ridiculous in ways devs put too much emphasis on these “automatic” components. Like the annoying page header that suddenly scrolls with content and takes up 1/3 of the page. Ack! Don’t even get me started.

[denton-scratch]

> The browser has a search bar at the top of the page; Amazon has a search bar at the top of the page.

I assume this is deliberate. Amazon doesn't want you clicking on URLs that don't point to Amazon. A search bar that doesn't do an internet search, but looks like a browser search bar, would seem to fit the bill.

I believe Amazon will fade away, once that bald guy reaches the orbit of Saturn. It's basically just an online shop with low prices - I can't see any USP.

Incidentally, the combined URL-and-search bar (is that still called the "awesomebar"? It's not awesome) in my version of Firefox (93.0, running on Windows 10) doesn't actually let me search, unless I select a search engine. If I search for "red shoes", it tries to take me to "redshoes.com". If I search for "red doctor martens", it says it can't find a site with that name. I have to choose a search engine, even if I only have one search engine configured. I suppose I must have broken something.

[david422]

This is my mom. Trying to walk her through steps on the phone like logins and lost passwords is a nightmare.

I imagine it would be like a car mechanic trying to walk me through changing the oil over the phone. Since it's not in my interests, I just want it to work, I don't have any desire to learn it.

[soylentcola]

At the same time, oil changes are more of a hassle that you only need to deal with every year or two. You can get away with not bothering to sort it out (and even if you know how, it might be worth the extra cost to just pay someone to do it faster on those rare occasions).

But if you use a computer to access resources and services on the web, you probably do so much more frequently than you change your oil. I'd liken it more to knowing how the turn signals, headlight controls, and wipers work on a car.

You don't need to know how to repair those items or how exactly they operate. But since that familiarity is something inherent to the operation of a car, you should at least know the basics of usage if you plan to do much driving.

[somedude895]

Same with my mum. It's really insightful to try to see things through her eyes. For example not understanding context like which app she's currently in blew my mind at first, but totally makes sense.

[TeMPOraL]

> I imagine it would be like a car mechanic trying to walk me through changing the oil over the phone. Since it's not in my interests, I just want it to work, I don't have any desire to learn it.

Really?

I don't believe there exists a task I theoretically could perform if I knew the steps, that I would be unable to do if those steps were being explained to me by an expert. Even if it was gardening or cooking (two areas I have extremely little interest in). In my mind, this very concept doesn't parse.

On the other hand, I do know people like this, and I hate helping others with computers over the phone.

I believe this has nothing to do with one's intelligence or familiarity. More like some kind of general intellectual or emotional "closedness" - an instinctive refusal to do things out of one's comfort zone, even if one is guided step-by-step, and refusing to take those steps causes a huge loss. I have no idea how this comes about, as it's totally alien to me, except that I see it in most people.

[asdff]

at least today you can share your screen on zoom and demo what you are talking about

[motoboi]

I painstakingly developed a personal script for how to teach people how to split a screen between two chrome tabs.

This is amazingly and surprisingly difficult thing to explain over the phone to “normal” (born before computers were prevalent) people.

Basically I got it divided in two groups: those who have used internet for the first time after 18 years old (hardest group. Have to explain in terms of geometrical figures, like lines and rectangles on top of the screen, where in this rectangle is a good place to click and how to drag, and what a successful drag looks like), and the others (those I can explain how to “drag a tab”, because they already know what a tab is).

The address bar is more easy, I refer to it as the place where you type the site where you want to go (but very often people never type addresses, they open google and start from there, always).

This got me into thinking about getting old, more than once. How can I prevent this to myself (being totally confused and out of touch with current technology when I get older).

[wrs]

I think I’m still doing pretty well with knowing about and even understanding new technology. The thing is, I have a harder time finding it worthwhile. Like social media that seems to have a 5 year cycle just because the younger kids don’t want to be seen using what the older kids use. Do we really need a new IM system and different way of posting short videos to friends every 5 years? So much “technology” change is now just fashion.

[kiryin]

I think it's sad whenever I see people that are very proud of just how tech illiterate they are and just how little they understand computers. It's like teenagers who brag about how badly they scored on on their exam. In many aspects it's the same exact situation, change for the better wouldn't require much work, and this sort of behaviour only discourages others from even trying.