The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think (2016)
And this is why software sucks. We should focus on educating users, not stooping to their level<p>GUIs of old had a specific design language. Like: File, Edit, Window, Help in the menubar -- always consistent, always in the same order, and always containing the same thing. Min/max/close buttons in the upper-right. And so on. If one knows the GUI language they can use almost any application for many solutions at a basic level. This knowledge is getting forgotten as "designers" take creative steps to eliminate seemingly all thought that goes along with software usage. Nowadays "user-friendly" software has 100 different ideas about how to accomplish a task and it almost always involves hiding scary things from stupid users. Which also means that when something goes wrong you have no control over fixing it -- you're simply fucked. Unlike the past when there was usually an option checkbox buried in a comprehensive Preferences window, and you could disable/modify the unwanted behavior.<p>Ironically seemingly every app has to insult me with oftentimes unskippable tutorials and announcements just to reveal features that should have been easy to discover, but aren't, because the design language and UI standards have been forgotten and/or ignored.<p>Extensability and control should be WAY more important than catering to the most ignorant users.