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Comment by mysterydip | Hacker News Reader

Instead of blaming the customer for not being able to navigate properly, maybe the website should be built more intuitively?

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Computer literacy is often vastly overrated, especially by people in tech.

>In total, across the OECD countries, 26% of adults were unable to use a computer.

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/

I've worked for companies with large call centers, and anecdotally I don't have a single doubt about it. To close this gap computers need to be easier to use... these people aren't even at a skill level where they can reach the web.

Yeah. Computers have a pretty high skill floor and if you aren't using them enough to stay above that level, you will stop using them entirely and your skills will degrade to zero.

Most non-tech companies' websites are absolutely awful. Either the login/authentication system is half-assed and you can't access your own account, or the documentation is not easy to find and there is no good search feature, or the website itself directs you to chat/phone once you finally find what you were looking for.

I work for a government that develops a consumer facing system.

The UI starts in a Word document. Then the comms people toss colours and words into it to the point that I as a developer don’t know what parts of the system do.

Never once have norms of the web been considered in the design.

Google is the new IBM.

Saying to your boss that the VP of something is incompetent and made a crappy site will get you fired. Saying there's this new Tech at google coded by god himself will get you a new cost-center and a promotion.

For the company, it will turn out as nice as it turned out to all those places renting mainframe contracts well into the 2000s.

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