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What happens when you assume........
I'm in the process of digesting some survey results from a group of users who just went through an online course and once again I am being made aware of the fact that folks who use technology may not understand nearly as much about what they are doing as we assume when we set things up for them. (Kind of a run-on sentence there, sorry...)
Technology is not intutive for most people. I think those of us who work with computers, the web, etc... forget that often. (And, as another aside, I realize this is hardly the first time these things have been said....) And if we step back and really objectively look at what we assume our users can do, we assume way too much.
Posting to a discussion board is not an especially intuitive activity for a normal well adjusted human. Using ssh to connect to a secure linux server to.....well, you get the idea. I think we have to try to acknowledge the inherently difficult nature of working with computers, for most users, and then develop very coherent effective ways to train folks.
I have seen, time and again, technology act as a barrier for the "average" user. Some new tool is deployed and bam, the calls start coming in...and from a support end we, who end up fielding some of these calls, are often harsh and judgemental....
So when we look at all this cool, whiz-bang stuff....I think we need to be aware of the naive user and how any new tool or development might feel to them. Sure we can do it online and yes most people can do it online too......if they understand what they are doing, why they are doing it and how to effectively do it.
Enough rambling ranting for today........
- Paul Treadwell's blog
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Well said!
I'm constantly reminded of this ... I think it is all the more important for web20 ish apps like wikis which aren't that intutitive. There is also a divide between the cognitive style of more technically inclined people and "average" or normal users of technology. And that can be problem too.
Do you think all this generational and when users who were brought up using computers become the norm, there will not be a need for technical support or training - that people will just magically be able to use computers?
Beth Kanter
http://beth.typepad.com
the magic.....
There's a whole other set of fears and issues to discuss when we think about the younger generations and technology. I worry about over-immersion, but maybe thats just cause I'a a, relatively, olded guy. But seeing students walking outside on a beautiful day plugged into their i-pods or yakking on a cell phone while the world fades into just background scenery....worries me.
Technology has to become less obtrusive and more intuitive. IM'ing is easy....everybody can seem to understand and work with that tech. I think we just don't prepare our users well enough. One of the interesting things about the online course I refered to in the orignal post is that we had students ranging in age from 25 to 70 and some of the most engaged and detrmined users were in the upper end of that range. The tools were more of a challenge for them but they wanted to participate, to engage and work through the course. As the course was begining we sent out video tutorial for all of our users on cd. This seemed to help introduce some of our less computer savvy users to the system and ease their nerves and hesitation.
And thats another thing we sometimes forget about. Some people are very worried that they will "mess up" or break something...this is, of course, not helped at all by applications and operating systems that crash.
Anyhow......it's an issue with ramifications for any not for profit using tech. And Im not sure there has been any cost benefit analysis on the deployment of tech in offices....what does it truly cost to train and support users to interact with an online grant system, for instance.
One more reason...
why multiple follow ups can make a huge difference in training new users. Or seasoned users of some tools that are new to others!