I have patience for people that are willing to try and learn (like my 80 year old Grandma). It's those that have given up already and spend the whole time being defeatist and hinting that they want you to it for them, those people annoy me!
Infuriating when people can't use simple devices
- Thread starter FoxEye
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My grandparents are odd with this sort or stuff. They've never been able to work ANY on screen display. Even on the old video recorders, setting the timer on the tv screen was beyond them. But on the older models when you'd set the timer on a tiny little LCD display on the front of the machine they didn't have any trouble.
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I'm fairly sure the majority of the time it's because people want others to do it for them. Not the case of 'they don't know how to' it's more a case of 'Someone else do it for me'.
I work in education sector yet the educators don't want to be educated...
I work in education sector yet the educators don't want to be educated...
Indeed, a lot of people automatically take the path of least resistance. It's not helping anyone.
Icons instead of words are one of the worst sins a designer can make, because icons are so open to individual interpretation, such designers should be executed.
Soldato
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Associate
Keeps people in jobs tho...
it's so you can sell the product in multiple countries and not have to change the buttons in each region.
Also, the word "Menu", for instance, is nice and small and concise and so you design your button "space" accordingly. However, The word "Menu" in Afrikaans is "Spyskaart" and suddenly it doesn't fit in the designated space any more; and that's just one example, there are loads of instances where, in English, it's a tiny word and in other languages it can be like 3 long words because they literally don't have a single word for that function.
A washing machine has like 5 buttons max as well, just read the manual... and if remembering them is still too hard stick the legend on the machine
B@
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Yeah it's ironic because the end result in that even people in the same country can't work it because of local variations as to how icons are interpreted, never mind international variations!
Right it all comes down to laziness, designers that can't be bothered to do basic language research and resort to another design sin; fixed size icons. There's a reason why user interface functions like .setSize() are no longer used in computer programming, it's this very reason!
Right it all comes down to laziness, designers that can't be bothered to do basic language research and resort to another design sin; fixed size icons. There's a reason why user interface functions like .setSize() are no longer used in computer programming, it's this very reason!
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Deleted member 651465
D
Deleted member 651465
My mum is exactly like this 
If she babysits for me, I will hand her the Sky remote and say "just put whatever you want on.. there's films recorded if you want to watch a film" and she will look blankly at me and say "Ooh, I can't do that.. just put it on ITV".
This is despite her having a Sky box herself fffuuuuuuuu
If she babysits for me, I will hand her the Sky remote and say "just put whatever you want on.. there's films recorded if you want to watch a film" and she will look blankly at me and say "Ooh, I can't do that.. just put it on ITV".
This is despite her having a Sky box herself fffuuuuuuuu
Man of Honour
If you look at the other side of the fence you will see that most of the world doesn’t give a **** about how gadgets work and they just want everything to work by pressing one or two buttons. If it’s not simple then they won’t bother trying to work it out. Maybe geeks should not be the only ones involved in the design process....
Soldato
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quick off topic question, do swear words get sensored automatically now? Hence the yellow ****?
Soldato
Not most of the world at all. Its a very small number of the older generation that can't work modern technology. If you want something that works with one or two buttons, then buy something like that in the first place.
Soldato
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:s I'm going to be terrified now every time I want to call someone, for example you, a ****lets see
**** **** ****
i do believe so sir
well, yes and no, you only have a finite amount of space so it's not simply "does it fit in the button" it's whether the button fits in the available space. instead of "menu" you have (sorry for massive image):
It's not a fantastic example because Menu it's often fairly short, but when you have words which are 30/40 characters in length because the language doesn't accommodate the process you're trying to describe in a concise fashion then there's very little else you can do about it. What happens when you end up with 4/5 of these lengthy translations at a time? There's no amount of designing stretchy buttons that's going to help.
"GO" is an arrow pointing right
"BACK" is an arrow pointing left
"BASKET" is a picture of a basket
these are all symbols you inherently mentally translate and all for the purposes I describe above.
B@
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I think people forget about this very important factor. The path of least resistance is what everyone loves. Think about it. This is why technology is created in the first place. To make things easier for everyone. However, not easy for the people been asked the questions.
Soldato
I feel its a two-sided coin. If you design something (get something designed by) for these people you'll get a majority of people speaking up because it doesn't offer enough features and you'll have to buy a different product to get what you want..
Take Washing machines for example. My gran had a washing machine and a tumble dryer, her washing machine broke and she got a new one, that has an inbuilt dryer. We taught her how to use it to wash and dry, though she still uses it to wash then uses her tumble dryer..
Where as my uncle would moan to hell and back if he had to use a seperate dryer.
Soldato
Like people who can't use self service checkouts in supermarkets 
I wonder on a daily basis how many people managed to get to adulthood let alone beyond middle aged given their complete inability to comprehend and follow simple instructions on modern devices.
Card machines in shops are a classic example, there's only four ways of inserting a card and nearly all machines give you information on which way to insert your card and yet, some people manage to get above four attempts without getting it right. Then when the machine tells them 'Remove Card' it's like it's been suddenly translated into Klingon and you hear them asking the cashier 'it says to remove my card? what should I do?', humanity, I despair.
Card machines in shops are a classic example, there's only four ways of inserting a card and nearly all machines give you information on which way to insert your card and yet, some people manage to get above four attempts without getting it right. Then when the machine tells them 'Remove Card' it's like it's been suddenly translated into Klingon and you hear them asking the cashier 'it says to remove my card? what should I do?', humanity, I despair.