I stumbled upon a very interesting article from 2016 entitled The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think. The real point of the article, though, is “You are not the user.” Whatever you think about your users’ assumptions and skills is almost certainly wrong. It follows, therefore, that you shouldn’t use your own assumptions and skills in designing your user interface.
According to the article, the average developer has a higher IQ, higher literacy level, and is probably younger then most of their users. That’s a pretty breathtaking statement but the conclusion is not at all controversial: you can’t develop for yourself because, in technology, you are among the top elite.
A good part of the article is devoted to fleshing out the assertion that developers are in a special class as far as technology is concerned. Here are some of the major findings from a study of a several industrialized countries.
- 26% of adults can’t use computers at all.
- 14% of adults can perform only very simple tasks such as deleting an email.
- 29% of adults can perform only well defined tasks requiring little or no navigation such as finding all emails from John Smith.
- 26% of adults can perform underspecified tasks that require some interpretation and extra tools. An example of such a task is finding a document on a specific subject sent to you by John Smith in October of last year.
- 5% of adults can perform more complex, underspecified tasks requiring interpretation, extra tools, and monitoring of results. An example is finding the percentage of emails from John Smith that were about sustainability.
Developers are in that last small group. It’s easy to assume that most people have reasonable computer skills but it’s just not true. As the article points out, “You are not the user” is one of the hardest lessons to learn and accept. It’s an interesting article that expands on the above points and is well worth reading.