If, today, you were able to open the manual of your printer, and using a set of ‘usage scenario tables’, discern the correct DIP (or modern implementation thereof) settings, enabling the auto-configuration and communication options, several causes of frustration could be eliminated, i.e., initial frustration, subsequent frustration at the hands of off-shore support, etc.

The same configuration scenario may apply to wireless routers, home media servers, etc.

People want to buy and use. When they are liberated from the frustration of setup, configuration, and diagnosis, they reward companies able to provide that experience with brand loyalty. This is why Apple is a superstar. It’s what they delivered with the first Macintosh, and what we see with the current product line, all the way from the iTV through to xGrid and the Server and Storage products that accompany.

Steve’s grand solution is to ‘provide the whole widget’, ensuring control over the entire experience.

With Google playing a larger and increasingly inextricable part of people’s lives, we are looking at a similar opportunity; answer eight or ten questions (email address, name, define a basic hardware profile) and you’re on the internet.

Compared to the late 90’s (when many users got their first taste of the Info Superhwy), we are in a great place. No issues with baud rates and flow-control, no parallel ports, no game ports, no IRQ configuration, no block/sector/track formulation, no Word Perfect vs. Word, no ‘will X read the diskette from my Y brand word processor..’

Like the floppy disk, the underlying issues presented in the 1980’s with IBM PC-compatibility will vaporize, owing much to implementation of improved configuration through software and hardware homogenization.

The hard problems have been solved in many ways by many people. Implement that solution in software.. Allow them to simply ‘use their stuff’ and have it ‘just work’. You’ll see ROI, and likely become the ‘hero’.

Not only am I contacted daily, everybody expects the help that I provide to be free. Why is it that most people feel that computer people love to work on computers, therefore, they do not mind helping me just this one time for free?

I think it’s because computers break so frequently and so catastrophically that it’s hard to imagine they’re worth anything sometimes.

If computer professionals were asked questions like “what’s the difference between straight chaining and linear probing on a hashtable?”, we wouldn’t be frustrated at all. It shows interest in learning, rather than neediness.

Of course, I agree with the litl guys that the right way to solve this is to rethink the entire interaction paradigm, though I’m not sure if they’ve actually made real headway on that.

This is a great article and thanks for mentioning litl. Your thinking is indeed very close to ours. We think that, while it has its place, the multipurpose computer – with multifaceted maintenance and configuration issues – is a lot of complication for the vast majority of people who just want to have a decent web and streaming media experience around the home without endless updates, service packs, and totally non-integrated webapp interfaces.

We’d very much like to have a conversation with you, discuss litl’s view of the web as platform, and get your views on our product. We’d be more than happy to get you an exclusive interview with our senior staff for this blog if you so desire. Can you email me? If you can’t see my email just email asklitl@litl.com, for attention: phil.

Thanks

-phil

Looking it over again, I may have read more angst than the original commenter actually wrote. If that’s the case, I apologize. I do have some empathy for that problem, but it’s tempered by the knowledge it’s solvable.

If you have a Synaptics touchpad see Ubuntu Documentation: Disabling the Touchpad Temporarily While Typing. It’s probably the same on other distros.

I agree with you that there is a real opportunity here. The difficult part seems to be targeting these people. It generally follows that if you develop a new software, or hardware, product the early adopters will be the more tech-saavy individuals. Pleasing them is very different from pleasing a computer novice. This it makes difficult to target both.

If you look at the second largest pain point, Malware, you see another problem with targeting this group. Basically, this group does not see value in paying for software, especially subscription-based software. I’ve installed the Free Grisoft AVG so many times and used the free Ad-Aware product to clean a computer. Not once did someone agree to shell out money for the pay versions.

I think a good follow-up survey would be to target these people and ask if they have ever purchased any software, excluding games, after they’ve purchased their computer. If so, what percent of it was subscription based.

I agree that a lot can be done at the OS/computer level to improve software’s UX, but what can a 3rd party developer do?

Now, this poll is measuring when something goes wrong for the user and it annoys him enough to “make the call” and bother the nerd in the family. There’s a lot of frustration that remains below that threshold, and users just cope with it; that’s where usability tests are kings.

Has the GNOME desktop been subject to professional usability tests? Any plans for that from the OpenSuSE guys?

On that note, I’ve noticed a trend in the comments. Correct me if I’m wrong, but some people seem to think that the purpose of this blog post was to complain that we computer people get pestered by novices all the time with issues.

That wasn’t the point. I personally don’t mind helping my friends and family out with computer issues. They, in turn, help me out with other things. To me, that’s fine.

The point of this blog post was that the results of this survey were, to me, in many ways surprising and interesting. As a programmer and entrepreneur, they give me all kinds of exciting ideas.

Just wanted to clarify that.

She was extremely happy that everything was always working. But of course something had to give. In her case she had to have Skype available and at some point skype just borked and I couldn’t get it up and running on any distro or PC I used. Apparently something changed in the way sound works and skype being closed source couldn’t be patched for it. So she’s back on windows and I’m back to being miserable :/

(She still liked Linux/gnome better than windows, because she could find everything. I guess using e-mail, and webbrowser in the menu instead of the program names helped a lot. I had to rename all the start menu entries in windows so she could use the pc again )

It sounds to me like you have a lot of empathy for the issue the commenter described, and that you both reached a pretty similar conclusion.

It’s a tricky problem, that. ‘Power users’ need such features easily accessible in order for them to be usable – the zoom function is useless if it’s hidden away in a preferences screen. But making them accessible makes it easy for novices to use them by accident, with no idea what they did to make things go wrong.

Kind of off topic to your overall post, but this part? Yeesh. I’m torn between empathy and irritation. I had the same trouble, but when it started to get out of hand, instead of moaning, I decided to do something about it. First I stopped answering the phone, which was obviously flawed. Later I found a better policy. Near family and close friends get two helpdesk calls a year. After that I charge them. I charge everyone else no matter what. At first I had a lot of anxiety about it, worried that people would feel I let them down. Only after I told them did I realize most people were happier *paying me* than accepting help for free. Responsible people are like that. The other kind of people I don’t really miss.

A lot of this family helpdesk angst can be avoided by just acting like a professional adult.