The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think
www.nngroup.com
Across 33 rich countries, only 5% of the population has high computer-related abilities, and only a third of people can complete medium-complexity tasks.

via Michiel

Friends of my generation who weren’t in families with a computer they could play around on have ended up far less comfortable with tech. I would love to see data like this broken out by class background.

I suspect companies have historically been overvalued based on what a techie user could get out of them rather than their intended user. Does this happen with phone apps too?

Are there modes of instruction that help people advance in these skills? They seem like they ought to have a lot of impact, and yet I don’t think I see training around me.

How does good/bad UI design impact this?

  • tatooinesunset@lemmy.ml
    0·
    4 years ago

    I’m sure class (or more generally, growing up with computers) matters a lot, but the distribution described in this article pretty much looks like an IQ distribution - this doesn’t mean its conclusions are wrong (two thirds of the population can’t use your design) but that it might be futile to try to teach advanced computer skills to a large proportion of society.

    • Maya@lemmy.mlOP
      0·
      4 years ago

      So even given

      • people argue about exactly what mediates the impact of poverty (esp. childhood poverty) on IQ, but it’s, like, there, and
      • studies broadly show education has an impact on IQ

      instead you’re projecting the idea that IQ accurately tracks something meaningful and immutable onto “advanced” tech skills (which, let’s be clear, in this context are explicitly not Ph.D. stuff) because of… the shape of a distribution?

      yikes

      • tatooinesunset@lemmy.ml
        1·
        4 years ago

        Fair enough. Re-reading that comment, it isn’t very clear what I meant and it’s also true that the fact that something looks like a bell curve doesn’t mean at all that it’s related to IQ.

        What I was trying to say is that the tasks given to the participants were at least as much about reasoning skills as about the computer skills and it is hard to separate the two.

        I alway thought (was taught) that IQ is fixed and cannot really be changed so I found the study you linked especially interesting. If this is indeed broadly proven, it would change my entire worldview! Where can I read more about this?