Across 33 rich countries, only 5% of the population has high computer-related abilities, and only a third of people can complete medium-complexity tasks.
It has always been this way. Part of my “age-driven degradation” is that I can see the same patterns repeating themselves often at odds with the age of the people in question. The average competency age always shift younger as any skilled profession does. I however am constantly having to show people that should have a newer skillset than me basic problem solving skills and somehow we can both read the same documentation and they not see the solution.
There was a post here a while back about how younger generations often don’t understand concepts like file system structures because concepts like that (which are still relevant in a lot of contexts) have been largely stripped out of modern user interfaces. If your primary computing device is a cell phone, a task like “make a nested directory structure and move this file to the deepest part of it” is a foreign concept.
I guess my point here is that I agree with yours about this being cyclical in a sense. I feel crippled on a cell phone, but I’m also in my comfort zone on a Linux terminal. Using web apps like MS Teams is often difficult for me because their UIs are not things I’m comfortable with. I don’t tend to like default layouts and also tend to use advanced features which are usually hidden away behind a few menus. Tools built to meet my needs specifically would largely not meet the needs of most users. A Level 1 user would probably have a better experience there than a Level 3 like me. It’s hard (maybe impossible) to do UX design that satisfies everyone.
They defined it for the study.
Obviously you’d find a level 3+ in many population groups but each would a fraction of the alrady small <10% level 3 population pool.
I have a large chunk of my colleagues who have little to no experience using CLI tools, and totally have found the last part to be true. In fairness, documentation is all over the place quality wise (I generally find Microsoft’s useful but I’ve totally had issues in the past with undocumented or vaguely documented features/dependencies). People will google their issues, and increasingly I’ve found it doesnt point you at the documentation directly, instead stack overflow or medium pages.
I feel like there’s definitely some conceptual… Stuff for lack of a better word that’s an issue, I’ve seen a number of people focus on the execution instead of trying to understand what’s the issue and define it logically, when pressed they struggle to explain.
It has always been this way. Part of my “age-driven degradation” is that I can see the same patterns repeating themselves often at odds with the age of the people in question. The average competency age always shift younger as any skilled profession does. I however am constantly having to show people that should have a newer skillset than me basic problem solving skills and somehow we can both read the same documentation and they not see the solution.
There was a post here a while back about how younger generations often don’t understand concepts like file system structures because concepts like that (which are still relevant in a lot of contexts) have been largely stripped out of modern user interfaces. If your primary computing device is a cell phone, a task like “make a nested directory structure and move this file to the deepest part of it” is a foreign concept.
I guess my point here is that I agree with yours about this being cyclical in a sense. I feel crippled on a cell phone, but I’m also in my comfort zone on a Linux terminal. Using web apps like MS Teams is often difficult for me because their UIs are not things I’m comfortable with. I don’t tend to like default layouts and also tend to use advanced features which are usually hidden away behind a few menus. Tools built to meet my needs specifically would largely not meet the needs of most users. A Level 1 user would probably have a better experience there than a Level 3 like me. It’s hard (maybe impossible) to do UX design that satisfies everyone.
Are the user levels an actual defined thing and are there more?
The article quotes extensively from the study about this and gives examples regarding what kinds of tasks qualify for those levels.
After actually reading the article I see they’re well-defined. Thanks for pointing me there ^^
They defined it for the study.
Obviously you’d find a level 3+ in many population groups but each would a fraction of the alrady small <10% level 3 population pool.
I have a large chunk of my colleagues who have little to no experience using CLI tools, and totally have found the last part to be true. In fairness, documentation is all over the place quality wise (I generally find Microsoft’s useful but I’ve totally had issues in the past with undocumented or vaguely documented features/dependencies). People will google their issues, and increasingly I’ve found it doesnt point you at the documentation directly, instead stack overflow or medium pages.
I feel like there’s definitely some conceptual… Stuff for lack of a better word that’s an issue, I’ve seen a number of people focus on the execution instead of trying to understand what’s the issue and define it logically, when pressed they struggle to explain.