What non-technical users don’t understand about your software

http://successfulsoftware.net/2010/08/24/10-things-non-technical-users-dont-understand-about-your-software/

by epi0Bauqu • 16 years ago

147 70 16 years ago

cstuder• 16 years ago

Number 11 (Only applies to non-english speaking software): English.

Related to number 4, english expressions can be as bad as technical jargon. There's no reason to call a file 'file', if the localised Datei or Fichier is better understood.

gaius3• 16 years ago

Consequently, when they install a desktop app on a new machine they are often surprised that it can’t automatically access the documents they created on a previous machine

Really!? I've never, ever observed this.

In the words of Zoolander, the files are IN the computer.

patio112• 16 years ago

I've never, ever observed this.

Back when I had downloadable software prominently available I'd get this about, oh, five times a month and twenty times right around the start of the school year.

hernan7• 16 years ago

Some years ago, a relative of my wife bought a new PC and gave her old one to the doorman in her building. She then asked my brother-in-law to "put the data back" in the new machine. She apparently hadn't realized that "the data" was now at the doorman's, inside her old machine.

I think my brother-in-law was able to get a hold of the old machine before it got re-installed.

gaius3• 16 years ago

Wow. That's like buying a new suitcase when you arrive at the hotel, and wondering why your clothes aren't in it. Packing? Don't confuse me with your jargon!

techdmn• 16 years ago

I once worked at an independent hotel where they backed up their reservations nightly, by dragging and dropping the reservation application shortcut from the desktop to a zip drive. I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry when they asked for help retrieving the data after several reservations were lost. They kept pulling the shortcut back off the zip drive, but the data wouldn't come back. :) (I ended up examining the original corrupted data file, found a phone number that the owner recognized, and all was made right.)

patio112• 16 years ago

I am left in the bittersweet position where a) I 99% agree with an article and b) scratch one post in my Wordpress drafts, because it would add very little to the topic now.

I also sell software to customers with substantially the same technical aptitude as Andy's. My comments:

1) Copy/paste: they can't reliably copy/paste. Of those customers who can copy/paste, a number of them know exactly one way to copy/paste, and will fail if it does not work in the context they need it in. (i.e. they either know what an MS Word copy/paste button combo looks like, OR they know how to right click, OR they know the keyboard shortcut -- and it is, far and away, the keyboard shortcut which is the most widely supported and least widely understood option)

Andy's suggestion is to make it easier to type things out longhand. I suggest making it unnecessary instead -- you can do some client/server trickery to avoid this (discussed here: http://www.resultsjunkies.com/blog/back-office-exposed-bingo... under the heading "When a sale comes in, can you walk us through the process?")

9) My sole point of disagreement with Andy: this type of user really wants to relate to their computer like they relate to a toaster. No one reads a toaster's documentation, and no one should have to. If the UI needs external documentation, that is probably a bug.

lionhearted• 16 years ago

> I am left in the bittersweet position where a) I 99% agree with an article and b) scratch one post in my Wordpress drafts, because it would add very little to the topic now.

Post it anyways? Your articles and style fill me a mix of joy and inspiration. And I think hundreds or thousands of other people too.

TorKlingberg• 16 years ago

Don't forget Copy and Paste on the Edit menu.

bodhi• 16 years ago

> you can do some client/server trickery to avoid this

I saw quite a neat trick the other day when I bought EagleFiler[1]. Having already used the demo, the program had registered a URI protocol handler, and included a link in the registration email that looked like:

    x-eaglefiler://p?n=<my name>&sn=<my serial number>

Mail.app made this clickable, so it would have been unnecessary for me to even copy&paste the details (I didn't actually need to as I'd already registered, ironically by copying the serial off the receipt webpage).

Although, the text in the email makes no mention that I could just click on the link to register the program, so the point of the original article still stands...

[1] http://c-command.com/eaglefiler/

noahlt• 16 years ago

It seems like an easy way to avoid many of these issues is simply to make web applications where all the software is stored in the cloud. Most of the arguments I've seen for web apps are from the devs' perspective (you control the hardware, you can pick whatever programming language you want, etc), but I guess web apps are better for users, too.

njharman2• 16 years ago

There's a whole nuther article about "what users don't understand about your web app"

That network/DNS/router/etc issues aren't your fault and you can't fix them.

Everything regarding passwords and account security.

URLs, esp typo's and that The Google (esp it's search bar) != Internet.

HTTPS

Phishing, and a slew of other attacks. Also that punching the monkey is probably a bad idea.

Browsers, different browser versions, different browser manufacturers, cross browser incompatibility. Also that you did not create the browser and you can't fix it. Also why they have to download install new version of browser to use your software.

Why your webapp quits working when they aren't connected to The Google.

fbnt• 16 years ago

My benchmark for non-technical users is my father: he's 60-something and he started using computers & internet 3 years ago when I bought him a laptop.

I can recognize in him pretty much all the behaviours described in this article, especially the fear of setting everything up on fire with a click, but I've also noticed that he tends to use the machine with a weird sequential approach.

Click the fox icon, go to thataddress.com, click there, type this, click yes etc.

For some complicated tasks (such as burning a DVD) he's got all the buttons and actions he needs to perform written down on a piece of paper.

The amount of struggle and effort he puts in it always fascinates me.

albemuth• 16 years ago

I get a combination of wanting to laugh / heart break when I see my Mom/Grandfather writing down instructions on their note pads.

amalcon• 16 years ago

The "writing down instructions" approach is very effective for complex tasks that you are unable to script and don't want to invest the time to learn properly (such as, for example, every task on a computer for a certain class of user).

I use this approach all the time for bureaucratic "machines". It's so much more efficient than trying to actually figure out how the bureaucracy works.

Gormo2• 16 years ago

But if you build an abstract semantic model of the bureaucratic "machine", you'll be able to "program" the organization as if it were a computer. Imagine what you could accomplish!

Sure, it's a lot more difficult due to the non-deterministic nature of most social systems, but even a loose, stochastic model allows you to "hack" organizations in a way that is likely to make your endeavors within an organization that much more effective.

Interestingly, the fuzzier nature of social systems gives it a kind of "undo" function - you can, in most circumstances, make up for mistakes and misjudgements - so the cost of experimentation is more similar to software than to, say, structural engineering.

stevenbedrick• 16 years ago

My assorted elderly/older relatives all exhibit the same pattern, and after years of not understanding it, I've finally learned enough about how people learn to explain it. Basically, they haven't developed any kind of abstracted internal mental model of what the computer or software are doing, and, as a result, treat it as a rote incantation. To put it in education-geek terms, they're stuck at the first level of Bloom's Taxonomy, and while they have some "knowledge" (where to click, etc.) they have no "comprehension" and therefore don't really know what their knowledge means or represents in any kind of larger context.

As far as they're concerned, each step in their "get my email" checklist is equally important and equally arbitrary. You could literally tell them that, after clicking on the fox icon and going to thataddress.com, the next step is to spin around counter-clockwise three times in their desk chair while singing "God Save the Queen", and they'd believe you- and then, one day when they only spun around twice in their chair, they'd be calling you in a panic to ask if that's why their "internet is broken".

This isn't a matter of stupid vs. smart, or anything like that- it's a matter of learning. Getting past that first step is hard for a lot of people, especially with computers[1]... and, while I'm on my soap box, I gotta say that I'm not convinced that GUIs do a good job of making it any easier (although I certainly can't think of anything that does a better job). GUIs make it really easy to aquire "knowledge" about how to use a program, but they can impair their users' abilities to get past that first step and really understand what's going on.[2]

I think that this is because GUIs sort of imbue the computing experience with a sense of, for lack of a better word, "false concreteness"- they make what are, in reality, highly abstract tasks appear to be very concrete, and let novice users get away with treating them as such... until, of course, something breaks or changes, at which point the user panics: since they don't have any sense of the larger context surrounding their use of the computer (i.e., why they need to click on one button as opposed to another, what the address in the address bar really means, etc.), they have no way of telling what "broke", or whether the changes they're seeing are important or not, and they don't have the mental tools they need to reason effectively about ways to get around whatever problem they've encountered.

Neal Stephenson touches on this subject a little bit in his essay, "In the Beginning, There Was the Command Line." It's more than a little dated, but I actually re-read parts of it a week ago and I'm happy to report that it's held up better than a lot of things that were written in 1999 about computers. Not surprisingly, the things that have held up the best are the parts that aren't tied to any specific piece of technology, but rather are about the abstract concepts and theories underpinning modern (i.e., post-1984) UI design.

[1] Anybody who's tried to teach somebody how to program will tell you that, while students have trouble with syntax and what-not, their bigger problems are almost always related to learning to think about problems in an abstract and generalized way.

[2] Here, I'm not necessarily talking about understanding the algorithms and data structures behind the program- I don't think it's particularly important for most users of most programs to understand the software at that level, although there are some cases where it might be desirable (certain medical or industrial applications, for example). What I'm referring to is the abstract understanding of how the different parts of the user interface fit together with one another and with the task that the program is trying to accomplish for the user- sort of like what Joel Spolsky's talking about in his "Figuring Out What They Expected" essay, but at an even more basic level.

MWinther• 16 years ago

Exactly. Getting a working mental model, even if it's not very exact, does wonders for the ability to experiment. The problem is, most people get an explanation of what the different parts of the computer are, but not a working model of how it works.

And here lies the challenge of designing computers that are useful for people without the mental model, and efficient for people with it. Gadgets tend to do one or the other, but accomodating both is a good bit harder.

powrtoch2• 16 years ago

To me, the interesting thing is that the entire culture of usability seems to be focused on widening this gap. Perhaps the biggest rule of user interface is "the user shouldn't have to care how it works". This extends even down into programming. You bring in a library, you look at the function specs, call a function, and if it works without you having to grok a single thing happening beneath the surface, it's resounding success. The same thing but worse happens at the application level.

Of course, good luck competing in a market where you're the only guy trying to (gasp) make the user understand what's going on. I don't even know if I expect the problem to get worse (as interfaces become more and more abstracted) or better (as users increasingly grow up with computers in their lives) as time goes on.

wvl• 16 years ago

Witness what happened when google results for "facebook login"[1] returned an article on readwriteweb, which confused thousands of visitors who thought that facebook had redesigned. So this is not an isolated phenomenon.

1: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_google_failed_inter...

njharman2• 16 years ago

> [techies explore & fiddle] Non-technical users aren’t so confident and won’t try things in the same way. In fact some of them seem to think that a wrong move could cause the computer to burst into flames.

This is the fundamental difference between a "technie" and a "non-techie". In fact the inclination to explore, to fiddle, to hack is largely how someone gains the knowledge, experience, and craft to become a "techie".

mattmanser• 16 years ago

Reminds me of this xkcd comic: http://xkcd.com/627/

Gormo2• 16 years ago

I suppose fear literally is the mind-killer.

I've noticed that my own depth of comprehension is far better when I explore and experiment first, and not study the formalized knowledge from a textbook/documentation until I'm satisfied that I have at least grasped the fundamental patterns on my own. This works not just in computing, but in almost every context (or at least those that don't have the potential to cause serious damage or injury).

dkarl2• 16 years ago

It doesn't make sense to distinguish "technical" from "non-technical" users. Plenty of users with no interest in programming and no formal training in computing handle these tasks easily. Many users understand that a file exists in a physical location, that it can be copied from a hard drive to a flash drive, and copied from that flash drive to a different computer, and they understand the necessity for that. And they understand that when they use a web app that relieves them of that burden, that the data is now stored "out there" somewhere instead of locally.

From the other side, I had a boss with a Master's in Computer Science who had lots of trouble with normal desktop usability. He certainly never learned to guess which actions were reversible or not. My sister, who teaches history and is barely technically self-sufficient, could run rings about him on the Windows desktop, not to mention my friend the accountant who has never written a program but could be a passable professional programmer with six months' full-time training.

So instead of saying, "this is what non-technical users don't understand," it's better to say, "these misunderstandings are part of the normal spectrum of user savviness that you will have to deal with." Whether a user is technical or non-technical only allows you to make a rough guess about the mistakes they'll make.

ddelony• 16 years ago

How do you get a master's in computer science without knowing how to operate a computer?

Someone• 16 years ago

The same way you get a master's in astronomy without knowing how to operate a telescope.

sigstoat• 16 years ago

oh, if you want them, most places have plenty of courses that are all reading papers, or talking about managing development, or crossover with cogsci departments. then you do a thesis on how developers are affected by some lights which change color depending on the number of bugs in their tracking system.

dkarl2• 16 years ago

His Master's was about algorithms and was entirely mathematical. His undergrad was in electrical engineering, and it involved plenty of hands-on work... but he got both his degrees in the 1970s. There's a pretty good chance Windows was not part of the curriculum.

Luyt• 16 years ago

This article reminds me of two things I've observed in ordinary computer users:

1. Many users don’t understand how or where data is stored or even that it is separate from the application.

That is correct. My photographing neighbour keeps his photos 'in' Adobe Bridge, another neighbour keeps them 'in' Adobe Elements. They don't have a notion that those programs only offer a view on the pictures which are stored in some directory on their harddisk (they don't understand the hierarchical file system either). When they have to import photos from their camera or email a photo, they always do it from their photo cataloging program, never from the Windows Explorer.

Likewise, a few of my collegues think their texts exist solely 'in' Microsoft Word, and that the 'Internet' is the same as the WWW.

2. reversibility

One day I was helping a friend of a friend with transfering some texts over to another computer. We reviewed a text, by accident I deleted a paragraph and restored it promptly with Control-Z (undo). The person was looking flabbergasted at me: 'How did you do that?'. He told me that often when some part of his text 'disappeared' magically without apparent reason, he had to type it all over again. He didn't know that Word has an Undo. I told him he could benefit from a basic Windows and Word training, but he wouldn't hear of that. He did remember the Undo trick, however ;-)

sesqu• 16 years ago

Beginning with Windows 98, it has been more trouble than it's worth to try putting your files where you want them in the filesystem, instead of letting the application find a place for them. After I realized this, I tried putting My Documents on drive D - that didn't go so smoothly either.

I recently helped my aunt install a new scanner. She asked me how to send a document to someone. After exploring the driver software for a while, I adviced her to start the scanner wizard/pamphlet printer/photo editor/document manager, click "scan", click "email", and let Outlook take it from there.

gphil• 16 years ago

This article talks about consumer software, but most of the issues are applicable even to relatively technical enterprise software. The end users of this kind of software generally have a lot of expertise in their daily routines, but stumble when they are asked to use the software to do something outside of their typical use patterns. It's important to stay humble and realize that the software you're offering to a customer is, in all likelihood, going to have a relatively small (but hopefully positive) impact on the user's life, and in these cases the users are not going to want to spend a lot of their time mastering your software.

todayiamme• 16 years ago

I honestly believe that this is the difference between Apple and the rest of the competition. You see, the secret they have to their products is that they realize that most people don't have any idea whatsoever what the hell a frikkin' mp3 file is. Neither do they know the difference between lossy and lossless conversion. They are intimidated by all those fancy buttons on the screen and are too scared to try anything just in case they break something.

Steve Jobs recognizes this and that's his genius in a way. So, instead of creating a widget that does everything they choose to make a widget that does everything the user wants. There's a subtle, but important difference over here. Only a small subset of their users want extensive options so that they can put FLAC and other stuff onto it. Those are the users who fret about the product to the nth degree and they know that they don't exist to serve them.

So, they pick a feature and implement it in a way that those other users (80%+ of the market) know how to use it, and that makes all the difference. Just look at enterprise software and how hideously broken it is. You have SaaS that try to do everything at once which directly results in their users doing nothing at once. This instead causes grumbling against the software and in the longer turn your sales go down. The hardest lesson in business, I think, is learning how to bite the bullet. No one wants to admit that their software can't do something. So, they rush and put the feature in to satisfy themselves without checking if it works or not. Big mistake. What's worse is that it is so ingrained in us that we don't even realize what damage we have done.

What I am trying to say is that it's perfectly fine to not have the insanely great feature X, but it's inexcusable that the user has to read a 300 page manual to use feature X.

This is why I suggest everyone to read the Apple Human Interface guidelines. They aren't perfect, but they've gotten quite a few things right. (see: http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/UserExp... )

JoeAltmaier2• 16 years ago

"does everything the user wants"

Then some OS X features completely baffle me. Like installing software. I'm not a "Mac guy" and each time I ask someone how to install software downloaded off the web I get a different answer, all preceeded by "You just ..." and then 10 or 11 simple steps. Apparently they have never heard of installers. I'd guess from this, that the average Mac has never had ANY software installed after it left the factory.

powrtoch2• 16 years ago

I find it pretty hard to believe that this is really the most typical response. Most Mac software downloaded goes like this: Double-click to mount, drag Application into Applications folder. Two steps, usually with big arrows to make it as clear as possible. The only other use case I know is: Double-click to mount, Double-click installer, click through till you're done. And most Mac users I know (non-techies) have installed several third party applications.

jsolson2• 16 years ago

Apparently the the drag/drop install thing is not intuitive to even technical users. I don't remember what my reaction was to this the first time I encountered it, but I'd guess it wasn't entirely positive.

There's a perfectly good system wide Installer on the Mac, but nobody uses it unless they have to, because installers suck (they ask, among other things, which drive you'd like to install the software to -- what normal user knows the answer to that question?).

A number of vendors are working to improve application downloads by distributing applications as self-extracting zipfiles that put the original archive in the trash on extractions, and making it so that if the application is launched from the downloads folder or the desktop it initially politely asks if you'd like to "install" the application. This is pretty foolproof. Even if the user declines to move it, the Application will still work from the Downloads directory or the Desktop, it just won't be as easy to find.

quanticle• 16 years ago

Really? I use Windows most of the time, but I didn't have any trouble installing applications on the Mac. All I did was load the disk and dragged the application to the Applications folder. One step. Granted, Windows installers aren't exactly rocket science either, but the process of installing software isn't difficult at all on the Macintosh.

Given that, I agree with you in thinking that the majority of Macs haven't had any applications installed on them since they left the factory. Why? Macs come with a much wider range of applications than Windows boxes. As long as its not common for consumer PCs to ship with Office and Firefox pre-installed, there'll be more software installation on Windows than on PCs.

yason• 16 years ago

If I were more demanding I would assume that, by now, a Mac would automatically copy the files from the .dmg over to the Applications directory when the user runs the program bundle for the first time. The programs would automatically get purged out after a timeout if the user never ran them again from the hard disk.

Or even better, something akin to Zero Install (http://0install.net/) coated with OS X system sugar would be even better. That would also resolve the problem of software updates which are a pain on OS X, unless the program goes handle them by itself.

chewbranca• 16 years ago

heh... I have the opposite problem with copy-paste.. users keep pasting in content from microsoft word and wonder why it doesn't work properly.

Seth_Kriticos• 16 years ago

This article raises good points, but I'd like to argue / disagree with it in several points:

It doesn’t mean that your users are stupid, just that they haven’t spent the thousands of hours in front of a computer that you have.

Like office workers spending 8 hours a day in front of a computer? They easily make that time only on work time.. not that it helps.

..they don’t know how to (or even that they can) copy and paste text.

Some users don't. But what should I do, send a copy of computer 101 with every eMail I send?

Many users are used to web applications and don’t understand that they need to download and install new versions of desktop software to get access to the features in a new version.

So, what's the maintenance staff there for? In my experience regular office users don't set up or update anything, ever!

Data storage

File system hierarchy and network mount points are so far off the average user horizon that you shouldn't bother anyway. You just point to it in the file explorer. Everything else is completely pointless.

As for filetypes and converting: ok, that's a valid point. It's a good idea to send instructions with it, as it is a somewhat non-common task.

The jargon you use

I agree. Talk the users language, not computer slang.

You should therefore never put something only in a right click menu or anywhere else that it can’t easily be discovered.

Please, I beg you. Put stuff where you would normally expect it from your WM / OS. If it would be in the context menu, then put it there. Normally you also put stuff in the menu bar / ribbon / icon bar depending on conventions. Don't try to invent new interface guidelines, you'll probably fail.. horribly.

Concurrency

Try not to expose them or avoid it entirely (rework the workflow if necessary). Otherwise build the interface in a way that clearly notifies the user of this circumstance.

Non-technical users aren’t so confident and won’t try things in the same way. In fact some of them seem to think that a wrong move could cause the computer to burst into flames.

Most of them don't try anything at all. They will ask you how to do it. If you have some kind of system that has tweaks: train your users (that's what tech training is for).

So try to stick to conventions they will understand

Absolutely.

The need for backups

I preach this all the time. People also always agree to me in this respect. Doesn't help, they never actually do it, much less spend money on it. Could as well talk to the wall..

That they should read the documentation

I totally agree. No one will read your precious documentation. If you roll out a new software, train them with the workflow. You do train your workforce to use the tools they use, right?

Unskilled users often don’t realize how unskilled they are. Consequently they may blame your software for problems that are of their own making.

May? They always do. I figure this must be human nature or something.

One just has to be as polite as possible in such cases.

In other words, stay professional.

-------------

Otherwise I found it the article as entertaining as irksome. Raises some good points.

WingForward3• 16 years ago

#23: Users will not read dialog boxes. Especially on Windows. They will click them away and not even realize they existed.

Try it.

1) Put a dialog popup in your MS desktop app that says, "Clicking OK below will destroy the chair beneath you. Clicking Cancel will make a box of chocolates appear on your desk."

2) Observe when a user performs a task that produces the pop up.

3)Ask the user if they were disappointed that no chocolate appeared.

The user will look at you with incomprehension.

To clarify, I am not criticizing users. Users are users, we're not going to change their behavior with training or help manuals. We need to design around them.

blasdel2• 16 years ago

That's a habituation to the reality of the Win32 style — "Find reached the end of the document | OK"

Users don't have an a priori instinct to dismiss dialog boxes out of spite — on the contrary, the elderly noob reads every one carefully as if the wrong choice would actually destroy the chair beneath them. A new dialog box like that would ruin their day, and mine when I get their panicked phone call now that they've gone off script. If they ever do build a mental model of the UI, they'll have learned otherwise.

WingForward3• 16 years ago

But because of the way UI is designed, one of the first elements of the UI mental model your elderly noob will learn is that dialog boxes are to be ignored.

jdietrich• 16 years ago

In the golden age of the British pop industry, record companies used to play their newly pressed singles to the elderly doormen and cleaners in the offices. If these old duffers could whistle the tune after hearing the record once, they knew the song stood a good chance of becoming a hit. They called it "the old grey whistle test".

I am increasingly of the opinion that the single most valuable asset to any consumer software company is at least one "old grey". The more time I spend with ordinary end-users, the more I realise that I cannot even begin to comprehend their mental processes. They are a total black box to me, with a completely different set of instincts and intuitive responses. I think that the majority of software developers, even professional UX folks, massively misunderstand their users.

demallien• 16 years ago

Yup. I'm lucky in some respects as a UX designer, because I do UX for set top boxes, not computers - my users are even less technically-aware that computer users, and they have a very strong expectation that their television is not going to be hard/confusing to use.

As STBs have got more and more complex though, taking on major media centre capabilities, interfacing to Internet services such as YouTube, Netflix and FaceBook, we are really struggling to keep the interface simple. But at least we are aware that this is a critical aspect of our software - computer app developers sometimes can lose sight of that.

aufreak3• 16 years ago

Nice one. Regarding point 7 ("what changes can be reversed"), tendencies are different for the younger cohort compared to those who grew up with DOS. Younger people actually try a lot without fear of serious damage, so if you're building for them, you can exploit this .. provided you ensure safety under such trials as well.

known• 16 years ago

"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." -- Confucius

What non-technical users don’t understand about your software

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