Most people seem dumb compared to you.
In the Internet industry, most people know the difference between Firefox and Internet Explorer. We also know what FTW is and how ASP, PHP and RoR differ. Well, or at least know that there is a difference.
If you meet a startupshacker who hasn’t heard about Digg, Google Apps or Freemium, you will be surprised. Right?
But this is only us, a small subset of digerati, who have the time to track almost everything new in our industry. The rest of the world? Absolutely ignorant in this regard, and this is normal. The problem occurs when you try to anticipate the needs of your users. There is a possibility that they will not understand you at all. A few examples.
1. A father recently told me that he does not understand how to respond to text messages. He does not have an ancient phone in which difficulties may arise, but an iPhone. What could be so complicated? So, he opened the “Messages” application, pointed to the interface and, slightly annoyed, said: “Where the fucking answer button ??”. I was dumbfounded. The iPhone interface is the most elegant and easy-to-understand interface that exists. However, it does not have a recognizable element that my father needs to understand. Without this button, he simply did not know how to respond.
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2. A few years ago, I maintained an online birthday calendar. All days of the month were shown there with a big red button on top “ Add a birthday ”. It was so big that it seemed to me that it was impossible not to notice. Unfortunately, I was wrong. Approximately 100 messages a day came to the technical support service and about 60 of them began with the words “I don’t know how to add a birthday”. At first, I was very angry at ignorant people who are more comfortable with sending someone an email, than to think and look around for more than two seconds. But then he did some tests and found that everyone was trying to add a birthday by clicking on the day of the calendar. If it did not work as intended, people thought the system was buggy. My mistake, not theirs.
3. Recently, a woman approached me at the reception and said that her daughter was also called Loïs. She said: “I was hoping to speak to you because I noticed that you know how to put umlyut over 'i'. Could you explain how to do this on the iPhone? ” I explained to her, and the next day at the office during lunch I told the story to my colleagues. I laughed and said: “Probably, some people still do not know how to add special characters to the iPhone!”. No one laughed with me. Then one said, “I don't know either. How did you do that? ”And then someone else confessed that he, too, did not know, and in the end it turned out that no one at all knew that.
4. Most recently, Patrick was called by his father asking how to find something on the Internet. Patrick told him the URL, but his father seemed not to understand what it was about. Then Patrick said: "Website address." His father still did not understand, so Patrick explained: “The letters you enter in your browser’s address bar,” after which the father replied: “I don’t know anything about that. I just click on the blue internet icon, Google opens, I enter what I need and I get there. ” Obviously, you can buy tickets, check email and do everything you need online without even knowing that each website has a separate address called a URL.
The meaning of all these stories? If you know how to enter special characters like ĂĽ, Ă© or on your iPhone or PC, if you know what a URL is and how to use most applications in a smartphone, you belong to a small group of experts. Do not think that everyone is the same, because you are an exception. Make your programs, websites and tools as simple as possible, and always test them on people.
In fact, people are not stupid, you just know much more in their area of ​​expertise. Don't let knowledge blind yourself.
If you meet a startupshacker who hasn’t heard about Digg, Google Apps or Freemium, you will be surprised. Right?
But this is only us, a small subset of digerati, who have the time to track almost everything new in our industry. The rest of the world? Absolutely ignorant in this regard, and this is normal. The problem occurs when you try to anticipate the needs of your users. There is a possibility that they will not understand you at all. A few examples.
1. A father recently told me that he does not understand how to respond to text messages. He does not have an ancient phone in which difficulties may arise, but an iPhone. What could be so complicated? So, he opened the “Messages” application, pointed to the interface and, slightly annoyed, said: “Where the fucking answer button ??”. I was dumbfounded. The iPhone interface is the most elegant and easy-to-understand interface that exists. However, it does not have a recognizable element that my father needs to understand. Without this button, he simply did not know how to respond.')
2. A few years ago, I maintained an online birthday calendar. All days of the month were shown there with a big red button on top “ Add a birthday ”. It was so big that it seemed to me that it was impossible not to notice. Unfortunately, I was wrong. Approximately 100 messages a day came to the technical support service and about 60 of them began with the words “I don’t know how to add a birthday”. At first, I was very angry at ignorant people who are more comfortable with sending someone an email, than to think and look around for more than two seconds. But then he did some tests and found that everyone was trying to add a birthday by clicking on the day of the calendar. If it did not work as intended, people thought the system was buggy. My mistake, not theirs.
3. Recently, a woman approached me at the reception and said that her daughter was also called Loïs. She said: “I was hoping to speak to you because I noticed that you know how to put umlyut over 'i'. Could you explain how to do this on the iPhone? ” I explained to her, and the next day at the office during lunch I told the story to my colleagues. I laughed and said: “Probably, some people still do not know how to add special characters to the iPhone!”. No one laughed with me. Then one said, “I don't know either. How did you do that? ”And then someone else confessed that he, too, did not know, and in the end it turned out that no one at all knew that.
4. Most recently, Patrick was called by his father asking how to find something on the Internet. Patrick told him the URL, but his father seemed not to understand what it was about. Then Patrick said: "Website address." His father still did not understand, so Patrick explained: “The letters you enter in your browser’s address bar,” after which the father replied: “I don’t know anything about that. I just click on the blue internet icon, Google opens, I enter what I need and I get there. ” Obviously, you can buy tickets, check email and do everything you need online without even knowing that each website has a separate address called a URL.
The meaning of all these stories? If you know how to enter special characters like ĂĽ, Ă© or on your iPhone or PC, if you know what a URL is and how to use most applications in a smartphone, you belong to a small group of experts. Do not think that everyone is the same, because you are an exception. Make your programs, websites and tools as simple as possible, and always test them on people.
In fact, people are not stupid, you just know much more in their area of ​​expertise. Don't let knowledge blind yourself.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/106953/
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