I came across an interesting video showing an IT literate person watching a novice doing some web searching and going nuts meanwhile.
I often find myself in a similar situation, looking at someone doing something on a computer, in what seams to me the hardest possible way to do it. But there are many ways to do the same thing on a computer and we are all given options (like driving the car form A to B can be done on different streets). But beware, most of the advanced options (like Ctrl-C Ctrl-V) are hidden and not obvious to most people (conclusion from observations).
Friends sometimes mention that I am too patient and that they could not stay calm watching the slow motion of computer usage. But I let users do the things they are used to. If I try explain how to do things faster to my dad for example, I only confuse him. If he asks me how to do it then I help. Otherwise I am happy that he can do at least some things on his computer.
Is it really users who fail to use software or is it interfaces that fail users? I know quite a few people who type URLs in google search box!! I know people who know URLs by heart but still type therms (and not URLs) in google search box to find desired pages! I even know a guy who keeps all his important bookmarks in FF toolbar and never uses them. Instead he uses google to find those pages! So is there a right way to do it? No! There are many ways, some shorter and some longer but eventually they all solve some problems.
The other day I asked a student to show me the size of a file (called output.txt) in command line. And to my astonishment he seriously typed:
$ ls -l > file.txt
$ awk ‘/output.txt/ {print $5}’ file.txt
