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I rarely tell people what I do because I hate those stories. I don't care that you broke your printer and your 4 year old niece fixed it by putting more paper in. Yes, she is super smart for actually reading the error message that said "Out of Paper".

I also can't stand it when somebody tells me they are just completely computer stupid. And that's before we've even said hello.

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I find that it's not so much inability so much as fear. A lot of people (especially the older generation) seem to think that if they futz with a computer they'll irreparably break it - so they stop and call an expert as soon as something deviates from normal workflow.

You think you're creating a UI that encourages learning by exploration, but a lot of your users are too terrified of their machine to dare click that button.

This is something we need to work with and educate users about - they're not stupid, they're overly cautious.

Couldn't agree more. My mom can get stuff done (email attachments, etc.) if she is sitting alone and absolutely has to do it.

If at all I am available, she will ask help for the smallest stuff fearing she would break something.

Sometimes I think its not even about breaking anything, but more about not fancying herself to recover from "even more damage."

This is a big part of it. When I'm helping somebody with their computer, I always tell them that they can't break it and not to worry about it.

I used to be able to tell people that, back in the DOS era. Unfortunately, in the Internet era, I'm afraid the people afraid they'll break it if they do something wrong are perfectly correct. One quick download of Bonzi Buddy and You Have Lost, for one instance from my own personal network.

That still doesn't break it. You just reimage and go.

That's the beautiful thing about software - you can't physically destroy anything, such that it can't be moderately easily recreated.

I can't backup my car, so I'm extremely hesitant about messing about with the transmission or exhaust or what have you.

It's trivial to backup my computer and data, and just go for broke. Worst case, I'm out some time, but no real dollar cost.

It might be trivial for you to backup your computer, but it isn't for most people, and most people don't do it. And, beyond the risk of data loss, people now also have to worry about identity theft and other financial loss if they do the wrong thing on their computer. (Keeping in mind here that for most people, browser == computer.)

my dad used the excuse of breaking the computer to not let me mess around with them when I was a kid. That probably set me back from programming around 7 years or so, now that I think about it.

That's an advantage of having an old, already-broken car. The potential downside of messing with it is small relative to the potential upside. I've a friend who has a nice BMW he drives every day but he recently bought an old junky Jeep and is rebuilding it in the back yard with his kids. They're a little too young to follow what all the parts do but not too young to learn that cars aren't just sealed black boxes; they're collections of parts that do things which we can take apart and put back together.

Perhaps a user interface should have a "fearful user" mode, where a tooltip on each button describes the worst-case scenario that'd happen by clicking it, and how to recover from that to a pristine, unclicked state.

Try telling people you study mathematics ;)

I was just about to say the same.

Fear of computers is nothing compared to fear of mathematics.

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