We have some friends staying with us from out of town at the moment. They are actually friends of my parents - the type of people that were always around when I was growing up and I called my Aunt and Uncle even though they are not blood-relatives. Anyway, they have recently retired and have decided to buy a computer and get on the Internet.
Considering they have never really used a computer in their lives, it is really interesting to see how well they have got on. Impressively, they have managed to download pictures from their digital camera onto their hard-drive and print them out. Also, they have recently managed to transfer some songs from CD's onto an MP3 player which they brought with them on Holiday.
The discussion I found particularly interesting was a discussion they had between themselves about the annoying pop-up dialogs that come up every now and then. Having heard many scare stories about viruses etc - they are concerned about *any* dialog box that pops up when they are working as they are scared that it is some nasty script kiddie trying to trick them into stealing their credit card numbers. Most modal dialog boxes they ignore and try to get rid of as quickly as possible - avoiding the "OK" button unless they really know they want to do it. Anyway, the conclusion that they had come to between themselves was:-
If it says "Upgrade" then you have to pay. If it says "Update" then it is usually free and safe to accept.
An interesting (and often correct) assumption I thought. Anyway, the whole day left me with a realization that I need to be more precise in the language used to convey messages to users - I'm also going to be sure to try to pick words that are easily translatable for folks who happen to be using a system in a language that is not their first. It's fascinating to see the coping strategies that people adopt when using unfamiliar technology - but also frightening how far we have yet to go to make consumer electronics more friendly to the "normal" people that we would like to buy them.
