Does Intuitive + Easy = Dumb and Dumber?
There is a problem with making technology – particularly computers – easy to use. The simpler and more foolproof they become, the less technically-proficient users tend to be. There’s that line from Rick Cook’s 1989 book The Wizardy Compiled; “Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.”
Apple has made usability and user-experience a core part of the design philosophy in everything they produce (Well, almost everything. That’s right, I’m looking at you, MobileMe web apps). Mac OS X and, more obviously, the iPhone OS are shining beacons of the right way to design user-friendly, accessible, easy-to-use software.
What’s a Manual?
Did you need to read a manual when you got your first iPhone? Or how about your first iPod? Even the least technically proficient people I know own such devices and they never once cracked-open the “Getting Started” booklet. These are the same people, it should be noted, who bought copies of “Windows XP For Dummies” because they considered that OS too difficult to learn and use without a printed guide to-hand.
The iPhone is probably the ultimate user-friendly computer (though not the most accessible, but that’s a different matter). My neighbor’s six-year old son once took my iPhone from my hands and brandished it proudly to his friends, announcing “I’ve seen these on TV”. He then demonstrated to his impressed buddies, with absolute confidence, “This is how you take photos… this is how you play music…”
For a six year old with no previous experience of an iPhone other than what he had seen on television commercials, he was surprisingly adept with the thing. I doubt he could have been quite so confident (or impressed) with a Windows Mobile phone or, even worse, a Motorola.
By the Numbers
A recent article on MacRumors reported analysts’ predictions that Apple is expected to sell more than 80 million iPhones in 2012. Of course that’s not the same as 80 million iPhone users, but it’s still a mammoth user-base. If we’re to assume an OS convergence across iPhones and iPods (and maybe tablets, too?) in the next three years, we can easily assume a few hundred million people all over the world owning Mac OS X-powered devices that are super-easy to use despite their many and varied forms and functions.
A Nightmarish Tale
The end result? Well, in the world of desktop computers the drive toward user-friendliness has today produced legions of end-users who know how to send an email but don’t know the difference between POP3 and IMAP; users that practically live on Facebook but can’t tell you if they’re using Firefox or Internet Explorer to get there. Users that – and I have personally experienced this during years of providing technical support to friends and family – can’t even tell you what Operating System they’re using;
Liam: What Operating System are you using?
Friend: What’s that? Is it the Internet? I use Google.
Liam: No, I mean… [thinks]… The thing you see when you turn your computer on.
Friend: I don’t see anything.
Liam: Well, you ought to see something. It’ll probably say ‘Microsoft’ or ‘Windows something-or-other’…
Friend: Where should it say that? Do I have to click on something?
…and so on.
I’ve had these conversations (yes, exactly these sorts of conversations, I’m not exaggerating) with otherwise very smart, very well-informed individuals. University lecturers, engineers, lawyers and doctors are all categories of end-user I have helped and who have all responded precisely in that stumbling, bewildered manner.
A telling point; I’ve never had to provide tech support to fellow Mac users. Sure, I’ve shared hints and tips and recommended cool software. But no Mac owner I know has yet asked me how to find their trash folder, email a photo or connect to their wireless router. (All examples of common issues my Windows-using friends have shared.)
The Death of Technical Proficiency?
These people are not dumb, they’re simply computer illiterate. When I was in high school in the early 90’s, there was a lot of talk about the importance of computer literacy. Becoming computer literate at that time meant learning how to build your own network, how to ping servers, how to patch, bridge, daisy-chain and hack until everything kinda-sorta-worked.
But this wasn’t the Reserved Domain of the Geek. These were skills required of anyone who wanted to use computers. Today, the standard by which someone is considered (generally) computer literate has almost nothing to do with technical proficiency, and everything to do with throwing sheep at friends on Facebook.
More than any other software or hardware company, Apple has removed the barriers to entry that, when I was growing up, were simply accepted landmarks in the computer technology landscape. The soon-to-be-released Snow Leopard is the latest in a long evolutionary line of carefully researched and engineered efforts at democratizing computer technology – and all the potential it unlocks for end-users.
For thirty years, in fact, Apple has lead the way in creating intuitive, user-friendly computer technology. They’ve most assuredly made the “dent in the universe” Steve Jobs spoke of. But the more foolproof the products become, as Rick Cook warns, the greater the idiocy of those who use them. I guess that means there will always be a job for a geek like me. But, really… how much easier can it all get?
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Computers should be like TVs. The focus should not be on HOW they work, but on WHAT information they are currently allowing the user to access. The less time people spend figuring out how to do things on their computer, the more able they will be to focus on the things that are important for them. Be it photography, music or just surfing the internet. The beauty of capitalism is that specialists (software engineers in this case) focus on what they can do best, and the people that buy their product focus on what they do best.
A very well-written article and you make a great point and I certainly agree with your statement:
> Today, the standard by which someone is considered (generally) computer literate has almost nothing to do with technical proficiency, and everything to do with throwing sheep at friends on Facebook.
Although I think there’s a divide between the people who *want* to be technically proficient with computers and ping servers, and the “average” user who just wants to have something that’s easily accessible and socialise on Facebook; of course the intuitiveness of something like Apple’s OS means that they are effectively shrouded from the technical crux that one would have had to have known yesteryear to have even started to use a computer, but for those who don’t want to learn the technicalities, the computer of today is here, and it means that a much wider audience can have access to what otherwise was a niche.
But a great article!
I heard someone say not too long ago (I think while referring to Vista), that if you build an idiot-proof OS, only idiots will use it.
First of all, please allow me to point out a misprint in your article: you mentioned something happening in “the early 90’s”. Since the apostrophe takes place of “19,” the correct spelling is “the early ’90s.” ;-)
Now, on to the meat: this is a *great* article, Liam. I *totally* know what you mean about the tech support thing. Just this morning, my recently retired father called me, frantic because he had just gotten a message saying that Microsoft Windows was infected, that he had 21 Trojans (or something to that effect).
I asked Dad to launch iChat, so that I could share his screen. That done, I quickly confirmed that he didn’t even have Ms Windows open; he was surfing in Safari, on his MacBook Pro running Mac OS X v.10.5.8. Safari was open to a known malware site, designed to look like Ms Windows desktop, trying to get users to download—guess what?—a Trojan.
Just to be sure that everything was good, Dad deleted his entire Parallels virtual hard drive. “Windows doesn’t work right, anyway,” he told me. ;-)
Hey idiot – about that missing manual – how was my wife supposed to figure out how to re-arrange icons or that double clicking the button opened up the media player controls?
And guess that the Apple store offered when I bought the birthday present – A master class on working an iPhone.
So much for your idiotic theory.
Well Fred sounds like a nice bloke.
I agree with this article, for the “The internet is the blue E on the desktop” crowd, OS X and iPhone are doing what technology should do: unobtrusively making our lives better (loose definition of better considering my dislike of face book)
And that Fred is the point I believe Liam is making, and in answer to your rather rude question I found such features by accident, really.
Liam, you’re a little late to this party – you may want to read Adam Engst’s recent (8/19) TidBITS piece: Have We Entered a Post-Literate Technological Age? http://db.tidbits.com/article/10493
Yeah. It’s terrible that people use matches and have forgotten how to hand spark a fire. And it’s terrible that the electric starter was invented and nobody knows any more how to get down in the mud and hand crank a car.
And you know, I think people should have at least an introductory course in electrical engineering before they’re allow to turn on their oven, or even their lights. NOT!
You should read the late Jef Raskin’s ‘The Humane Interface’ – regular people should not have to see the OS and mess with it, any more than they should be operating a manual choke to get their cars started. It’s a *good* thing that OSes are starting to disappear. Innards of devices are for tinkerers and technical specialists. Getting their work done in an easy and obvious way is for everybody else.
How much easier can it all get? Haven’t you ever watched Star Trek? “Computer, what planet is Liam living on?”
So tell me, Liam, what kind of electric motor is in your microwave oven? Does the fact that you don’t know make you an idiot? How about this: how many electric motors are in your home? At the dawn of electrification, questions like this were considered important; now they’re deep background that no one cares about. The same ultimately should prove true of computer operating systems. (A different question, along the same lines: how many CPUs are in your care, and what make and model are they?)
I have to disagree. Although idiot-proof OSes are indeed allowing people less technically proficient to access more advanced features on computers, why should this be a bad thing? If more people are able to use the latest technology, more new and innovative things will occur, and society as a whole will advance for the better.
I think the whole premise of every consumer knowing what OS they’re running is a nice idea, but why should they have to know these things? That’s how it’s currently like today, and nothing’s going to change that. In fact, why should people have to worry about these things at all?? Let the geeks like you and I handle it. Just because some of us enjoy tinkering with computers all day doesn’t mean that those who don’t are somehow less intelligent than we are. If computers come to a point where they’re so easy to use that there’s no need for geeks like you and I, wouldn’t that be an amazing thing???
All in all, I just think that if computers are easier to use, it’s all for the better. It allows more people easier access to the tools that are changing our world. How is that a bad thing???