Hey Y’all CEO’s of the Computer Industry…
I know (or it says so, at least, in the advertising) that you believe you have made all your toys and gadgets easy and “user friendly,” but some one needs to point out to you.
- They are not easy to use. I’ve been a technology professional (including high-end computer programmer) for over 40 years and there are times when I can’t figure out what your messages mean or where the next click should be.
- The average person doesn’t even do that well.
- You make a lot of assumptions about the average user and what resources he has available; very poor assumptions that cover perhaps 85% of your market. The rest of them you just leave hanging in the wind.
You would not believe, perhaps, the number of people who bring a brand new laptop to me still in its box to set up (Apple and Windows both) because the set up procedure is just “too intimidating” for a number of people.
Or the folks who bring me out to set up a printer for them, because that’s too confusing, also.
The consults I do to teach people how to use a thumb drive, or the hours I’ve spent explaining (to many different folks) what “the cloud” actually is (a marketing term, actually; just storage space on the internet for which the industry clears billions of dollars every year in passive income — shame on you; but I don’t tell them that, I teach them how to use it and why / when to use it)
Here’s my suggestion: EVERY CEO, VP or other high level management person in the computer industry needs to spend at least two weeks every year posing as a helper in a small computer repair shop — preferably a rural one, but even a city or university town shop would do — and while sweeping the floor, fetching the donuts and such, what you would actually be doing is LISTENING to the real world issues and problems that walk into such shops every single day of the week.
You’ll never view your own products nor your responsibility to the world in the same way again.
I dare you to this.
I double dog dare you… and who can resist a “double dog dare?”
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