![]() ![]() He certainly never learned to guess which actions were reversible or not. 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.įrom the other side, I had a boss with a Master's in Computer Science who had lots of trouble with normal desktop usability. 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. Plenty of users with no interest in programming and no formal training in computing handle these tasks easily. It doesn't make sense to distinguish "technical" from "non-technical" users. If the UI needs external documentation, that is probably a bug. No one reads a toaster's documentation, and no one should have to. under the heading "When a sale comes in, can you walk us through the process?")ĩ) My sole point of disagreement with Andy: this type of user really wants to relate to their computer like they relate to a toaster. I suggest making it unnecessary instead - you can do some client/server trickery to avoid this (discussed here. 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)Īndy's suggestion is to make it easier to type things out longhand. 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. My comments:ġ) Copy/paste: they can't reliably copy/paste. I also sell software to customers with substantially the same technical aptitude as Andy's. 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.
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