A mentor from early in my career once told me that if we made a system idiot-proof, only an idiot would want to use it. Are modern software systems directed toward that end? Is it really too much to ask for people to read and understand, and even use, documentation? That's the question at the heart of the article which follows.
Tom Comeau, Space Telescope Science Institute | tcomeau@scivax.stsci.edu
>From _The DEC Professional_, September, 1989, p. 160.
John C. Dvorak, "The Stupidity Factor"
....I recently read [an] aricle...about research on the topic of stupidity being done by Jon Miller of the Public Opinion Laboratory at Northern Illinois University. He discovered that 36 percent of the American public believes that boiling radioactive milk will make it safe to drink.
The more we study stupidity, the more we realize that the technological society toward which we're headed must protect itself from its own inability to keep up with things because of its own stupidity. The public will be overloaded with bad information and will be unable to distinguish hokum from fact.
People involved in the PC revolution aren't any smarter. Like the general public, they suffer from an overall incompetence that stems from lack of intiative, fear of the unknown, and plain old sloth. ...
Watching Microsoft Windows try to turn the corner on its quest for popularity reflects this. As easy as Microsoft Windows is to use, it's still too hard to use. ...
[Discussion of the difficulties in bringing up Microsoft windows, and consumer resistance to the product.]
The attitude seems to be that if the machine booted Windows automatically and if a lot of extra work wasn't needed, people might like it. Currently, it's too much trouble. The biggest fear is that you'll go through a lot of effort only to be disappointed with the results: The package won't work as advertised, or run your favorite program, or it crashes.
The only computer that has overcome this sloth factor is the Macintosh, with its logical interface. Steve Jobs realized that many people don't read. He put the documentation in pamphlet form. Plenty of information was omitted, but who cares? ...
People don't read documentation. This is part of a national trend towards stupidity, because people don't read anything! ...
[Discussion of author's son, who has difficulty reading and following installation instructions for a software game.]
Is he different from anyone else who refuses to read documentation -- the majority of today's users? In the past, it was easy to condemn documentation writers for their mediocre and hard-to-understand prose. But much documentation today is well-organized, simple and easy to follow. Still, nobody reads it. Even sophisticated users -- the ones who used to read documentation -- have joined the forces of the illiterate. They argue that life is too short and that a good program doesn't need documentation.
What do we end up with? The market demands bulletproof software that's extremely intutive. Can software be so intuitive that it communicates its commands through some nether world of non-verbal signals? We can expect researches to find out. Meanwhile, interface engineers will make a lot of money.
What does the future hold? Windows will have to change drastically to be popular, and soon 50 percent of Americans will believe that boiling radioactive milk makes it safe to drink.
