Comment by anonjon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anonjon | Hacker News Reader

"Another telltale sign is that instead of going directly to web pages, they use the search bar."

I've seen this as a 'test' for the unsophisticated user a couple of times, and I don't understand the reasoning behind it.

I do almost all of my web navigation via search-bar and auto-complete.

It works quite well (this particular Facebook page is weird though).

This is mostly because I don't like managing bookmarks (Bookmarks get too cluttery if you actually use them as bookmarks... I only use them for temporary stuff like saving pages for a product i'm researching).

If I really want to find something and I can't remember the name of the site (which is a rarity), I'd just use browser history or search for keywords anyway...

I think that there is something ergonomically wrong with the way that we name websites. http://news.ycombinator.com/ does not stick in my head (it does not come to mind first anyway). "Hacker News" totally does, and it is easier to type.

I think that implying people are unsophisticated when they are really just lazy/apathetic about specific technical details leads you to the wrong conclusions about what type of things they can handle.

I think you have a good point about the test not being perfect. But I think your explanation is a great example of what such basic tests are really trying to get at: people's usage habits reflect their level of knowledge. I agree that the reasons you bring up are valid, and to use the search bar for those reasons shows your grasp of the technology. There are pleny of people who use the search bar instead of the address bar because they just plain don't understand the address bar. Their reasons are the complete polar opposite of yours, but the end result is the same or very similar usage pattern. Unfortunately, like so much in life, it takes a lot more than a simple test to accurately determine the "why" behind an action instead of just measuring the "what."

Here is a long, only tangentially related story about the computer usage habits of "normals" where the action, a system restart, is much less an indicator of the problem than the reason...

I was getting together with a bunch of high school friends after our first year of college. We were chatting about our experiences, and as tended to happen around myself and my computer savy friend, discussion of computer problems started. One person began sharing a problem that they have with their laptop where for some reason the keyboard "gets messed up" and numbers start appearing instead of letters. I thought it was amusing, until I was shocked to hear not one but three more people jump in and share that they've had the same strange problem. These weren't dumb people either, just not tech savy folks. I was about to explain the concept of numlock to them, when one of the people pointed out that the problem could be fixed with a reboot, and advised the others to try it the next time they encountered the issue.

As I said, not stupid people. Most of them were at ivy league institutions and have gone on to successful careers. They don't know jack about computers. These are the "normals" we have to make sure not to forget when we design software.

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