Compared to you, most people seem dumb

<i>People are not really stupid, it is just that you know a lot more. Don’t let knowledge blind you.</i><p>The points made in this piece are very good ones but it is not primarily an issue of intelligence - rather, it is mostly about one's point of reference.<p>Early in my legal career, I worked at a firm that represented a group of Nob Hill condo owners who had had a series of problems with contractors and who had suffered a variety of damages relating to roof leaks, etc. This might sound mundane but these "condos" were (even in that day back in the early 1980s) worth well into 7 figures and the problems had been persistent and severe. Yet, when it came time to settle the case, we had to prepare a set of instructions explaining the settlement documents and where they needed to be signed. We were dealing with perhaps 30 people and they were all ultra-sophisticated types (former board of supervisors members in SF, top-flight lawyers, very wealthy business owners, etc.) and nearly every one of them messed up the execution of the documents in one way or another. When this happened to me, I learned one very important lesson: maybe <i>I</i> had been so immersed in this process that the detailed explanations made perfect sense to me, logically and otherwise, and even appeared to be simple, but, for those who have busy lives and who don't want to have to analyze in detail a set of potentially intricate legal instructions, such instructions were not simple at all. Why? <i>Not</i> because of lack of intelligence (these were very smart and successful people). Rather, because they were not familiar with the legal mumbo-jumbo and they didn't <i>want</i> to bother to go down the rabbit-hole of trying to figure them out. In effect, they simply wanted a "just tell me where to sign" sort of instruction (which suggested the obvious answer as well, because the matter did need explanations for them to be able to sign in an informed way - that answer was to just set up an in-person meeting with them as a group, give the explanations, and then have them sign).<p>This same principle operated with the big name partners in this large firm (some of the best lawyers in the nation), who couldn't be bothered with computers because "typing is secretary's work" (this was around 1980). These were exceedingly smart people but it did not fit their point of reference to bother themselves with trying to learn about some newfangled technology that seemed like a lot of bother to learn when their life-long habits had taught them that there is no advantage to investing time in that process.<p>Of course, with engineering design, one needs to anticipate what a very broad range of potential users might do with an interface that is developed by software engineers who may or may not share the point of reference of a great many such users. Concerning such issues, it is not "dumb" for an older generation to eschew text messages when they are used simply to picking up the phone to talk something over and, when they are forced to actually do a text message, to become frustrated with having to learn something that is not intuitive to them and that may lie well outside of their point of reference. Nor is this an issue merely of age and habits. Non-engineers have nowhere near the breadth of knowledge about such items as engineers do (the main point of this piece) and there are legendary examples of the boneheaded instructions that have sometimes been given because of the blind spot that this can create ("how do I sign on with my ISP when I have never had access to the Internet before [this was in the early 1990s]? simple, just log on to the web at xxxxx and follow the instructions").<p>Moreover, this issue can be generalized as well. If I have specialized knowledge about a given area (such as law), things that seem obvious and even intuitive to me may very easily not be at all comprehensible to one who does not share that point of reference. I realized this fundamental truth early on in my career in dealing with clients: that is, that learning to communicate effectively and simply about a complex subject matter is an <i>art form</i>.<p>There is no mechanical answer to it except that one must put oneself as best as one can in the place of the recipient of that knowledge and try to anticipate what the person does not know about the assumptions you will be making in giving the explanation.<p>None of this means that you are of superior intelligence to those with whom you seek to communicate. It only means that you have a specialized expertise that they lack and you have a tall order before you in being able to guide them by the hand, as it were, to make your explanation or instructions (or interface design) understandable. This is not at all easy to do. Indeed, it is one of the toughest challenges extant in the design world, and that is precisely why superb and elegant interface design (among other things) is so hard to come by.<p>I would therefore amend the main point of this fine article to say, "People are not really stupid, it is just that you know a lot more [about your area of expertise]. Don’t let knowledge blind you."

A good friend of mine recently commented that I always brought up role models that he had no idea who were, and I quoted as known and famous. The people in question were names such as Niels Bohr, Steve Jobs, Larry and Sergey, Richard Dawkins and Einstein.<p>My first thought was to dismiss him as not very knowledgeable, but then I thought to ask him who <i>he</i> thought were good famous role models. He rambled off a number of names that I'd never heard before, primarily from motoring and sports. A quick google search showed me that these people were just as known as my role models.<p>It's not so much about being dumb, it's more about simply having different interests and perspectives on life. This is a good thing.

The underlying issue is that people are afraid to try and explore. They form a mental model of how to do something, look for something that fits into that model, and then are happy. If they guess the wrong model, though, then they are stuck forever.<p>Skilled computer users, on the other hand, don't let a failing model bother them. They just try something else.<p>Most people will do this for anything <i>but</i> computers, though, which is weird. If their favorite road to the CHEZBURGER store is closed, they will find another road. But if it happens online... panic, frozen.<p>People basically need to be taught that you can't break computers. Programmers need to provide better undo functionality, so that this is not a lie.

I've found a fairly useful analogy that helps most tech people. If you're into cars and the analogy doesn't work, just think of something you need to know about at some point, but probably don't know much about at all.<p>Mostly this helps when a customer feels guilty about needing help, or someone in IT thinks "me &#62; all" because they can enter a command line. I think of my role like this:<p>Your average non-tech person probably feels about their computer the same way I feel about my car. I know nothing about cars. Usually I get my oil changed, but only because I have a repeating 3 month appointment based on 10 years of not getting it changed regularly. Bt even then, I sometimes forget. I now know I need to check tire pressure, but the place I buy my tires does that for me when I check in every two months. I know NOTHING about cars.<p>The reality is, your average person is no more stupid for not knowing "technology" than you are for not knowing automobiles, or how an airplane works, or the nuances of ASEAN trade relations. You've specialized, even if it doesn't feel like a specialization because YOU see technology all around you. Guess what: someone specializing in US/China trade relations sees the impact of RMB undervaluation all around, too. And a nutritionist sees daily health decisions all around. And so on.<p>So don't laugh because someone clicked a link to a pop-up ad when they thought they were closing the ad. Instead, help them fix their problem and, if appropriate, give them a pointer or two so they don't make the same mistake again. And absolutely have the patience with your customers that you'd want someone else to have with you, in your area of weakness. And if you don't think you have a weakness--if you think you're infinitely adaptable--I hope people around you have god-like patience, because you're probably wrong.<p>But regardless, don't get superior: our skills are valuable, but so are other ones. The sooner you learn that, the better off you'll be.

Two things to say here. First, "dumb" is not the right word. My wife is a theoretical physicist - thus pretty much guaranteed to be "not dumb" - but is not fully cognizant of the fact that URLs exist. She, too, has Google as her default home page and types what she wants into it. And she has Google search on the toolbar and types what she wants into <i>that</i>. <i>Even if what she wants is the name of the site</i>, she goes through Google first. Always.<p>The corollary to the observation that most people don't know what you take for granted in the computer realm, though, is that <i>your customers know all kinds of stuff you have no idea about</i>.<p>Think about that a little.

My programming language professor once told us the history of when he was assigned in a committee to produce a brochure about the college. At one point a publication specialist came to the committee meeting to talk about possible brochure arrangements. The specialist was using too many jargon words from the publication world so my professor wasn't really able to understand what the specialist was saying. At one point the professor had an epiphany: "My god, this is how we sound to people that work in other areas when we talk about our own area!"

I just mailed this post to my partners. We recently merged.<p>They sold individual accounts to teacher and students. I sold accounts to schools.<p>Their users are very web savvy and need no training. My users did not seek out the app online. They are being asked by their schools to use the application.<p>We are noticing now how things we took for granted in the UI are now being questioned. These new users are struggling with the same exact UI that the others picked up and ran with.<p>Although it is a much larger sale, we are finding ourselves having to "hide" most of our options behind an "advanced" button. We are giving the school admins control to set all of the options and therefore simplifying the app as much as possible. This will make our new users feel comfortable.<p>Great post.

I wish I could wrap my head around the size of the subset in relation to the larger set of users of the internet. I think that those are able to accomplish this have a huge leg up in product design, and this ability is something that is incredibly taken for granted.<p>One time my non-technical partner was attempting to access something I had been working on for a day or so and he told me that it wasn't working at all (even though I had confirmed it was before I had left) and I started to panic as we were close to a deadline for a client. Turns out that when i was telling him to access dev.somesite.com he was putting in www.dev.somesite.com and it was screwing up the javascript... because he naturally thought everything started with a 'www'.<p>It blew me away that he didn't understand the concept of subdomains, but also it was a reality check that he sort of knew his way around a computer and websites, and that it meant there was a much much larger set of users that couldn't grasp the concept of a subdomain. It can be difficult sometimes when you have the perception (especially on HN) that so many people out there know more than you about everything. I guess you just have to take a step back and realize you are still in the 99th percentile of the rest of the world when it comes to this stuff.

A few years ago I ran a website for a local community science fair. We'd get about 200 schools participating, and they have to register online before they can send kids projects to the fair.<p>190 of the 200 go off without a hitch. But I always get five or ten angry emails asking how to register a school, because they see no box to type into. Somehow they can find the "contact" link in tiny print and write out an email with bad spelling and grammar, but the "Click Here to Register" link in 24 point red text is impossible to locate. Also, these people are educating our children.<p>I learned the hard way why most websites have their signup form right on the front page. Call it A/B testing via angry feedback form.

This reminds me of the mixup a few months ago where a site other than Facebook was the top Google result for "facebook login" <a href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/11/facebook-login" rel="nofollow">http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/11/facebook-login</a>.<p>I find it rather depressing that while we've built up all these layers of abstraction there are still people who don't understand what the address bar is.

I think (one of) the biggest difficulties is that it's not as simple as<p><i>Make your apps, websites and tools as simple as possible</i><p>There are two targets that could be aimed for- (a) some kind of inherent intuitiveness/simplicity (as in the calendar example), and (b) something the most similar to past experience (as exemplified by the "Reply" button example).<p>One of my lab partners in grad school didn't believe there was such a thing as inherent intuitiveness. Back when I had more free time for such things, I remember having lengthy arguments with PC-to-Mac switchers explaining how the implementation of feature X was inherently more intuitive or ergonomic on the mac although it seemed a stupid way to do it to them. Some might argue that even in the calendar example, clicking the date is not more intuitive but similar to the past experience of writing on a physical calendar.<p>However, I'd argue there is definitely such a thing as an interface that is inherently non-intuitive, so by contrast, there must be things that make an interface inherently more intuitive.<p>So, I think of (a) and (b) as competing trade-offs that must be compromised. Going too radical towards (a), especially on a product that people already have formed associations with, and you end up an awesome, but fringe, product with a small community of fanatic followers (see NeXT). If you create a radically new something, or the impression thereof, you have a lot more leeway, since people are not psychologically attached to previous experiences.<p>Go too radically towards (b) and you aren't adding anything different with your product.<p>If you're making something new to go into battle against existing, well-established products, the best approach is to start with (b) and then slowly "fix" things, one at a time, over time, starting with features that give the biggest bang for the smallest change in user behavior. This applies to user-facing front ends, only of course.

See the comments at the bottom of <a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_your_one_true_login.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_yo...</a> for a practical example. See also <a href="http://xkcd.com/763/" rel="nofollow">http://xkcd.com/763/</a>.

My dad is a Master Electrician but he still asks me questions about his hotmail account and to resend a link to my Picasa albums. He deals with megawatts of electricity on a daily basis. I would hesitate to call him dumb...

I went to a talk given by a high-ranking Mozilla employee. He mentioned it was challenge getting the loyalty of non-techie users, because when asked what "web browser" they used, most responded, "Google."

I have above average intelligence, compared to me most people ARE dumb.<p>Said in jest, obviously....<p>In all seriousness, this is a very common issue for "isolated" developers and designers. We all work in our little cubicles building what makes sense to us. We never think that we are our own most knowledgeable users. A feature that is obvious to us is most likely obvious because we put it there.<p>It's also why in any company, the people making the product (whatever it is) should spend some time on the front line dealing with customers. Even better, they should WATCH people use the product they built.

Hmm, how do you get to the special characters on the iPhone?

It seems to me the problem is that there are many more opportunities for people working in computing to feel superior because of the way computers (and the internet, in particular) have become ubiquitous in our society. I mean, supposing you were a marine biologist. Not everyone is an expert in your domain, sure, but equally, people just don't normally ask you that many questions about it. If, on the other hand, a marine biologist gets asked daily whether a common species of seaweed is safe to eat, she might, after a while, start wondering why people are so stupid that she has to keep answering the same question. The problem is that in this hypothetical world, enough people eat seaweed often enough that this knowledge is required of our marine biologist on a regular basis, yet any particular person doesn't eat seaweed often enough that he would remember which species were safe to eat. Of course, it doesn't help that there are so many species of similar-looking seaweed or that there are just enough marine biologists around that she meets a group of them with whom she can feel smug at every party she attends!

Yesterday someone emailed me saying that they downloaded "Like.fm for Firefox" and then proceeded to ask me what the site's address was (it's Like.fm).<p>However cases like this are still the exception. Bad user experience design usually leads to clueless users. So it's not a matter of intelligence or technical acuity, it's all about how experienced you are with the interfaces and how well it's designed to be familiar to you. Obviously if you are the designer you're going to be more familiar than a new user. But it won't matter if you're using wormholes for your internet backbone if it's well designed even Abraham Lincoln will be able to use it.<p>That being said not all user interfaces should be dumbed down as much as possible. It just has to be as familiar as possible to your target user base.

This is a pretty condescending article. I mean, it's certainly true that your average Silicon Valley engineer or entrepreneur is of far above average intelligence, but things like knowing what a URL is isn't a good way to measure it. For the literal argument of this article, it's a specialization. I'm sure there are military commanders that are strategic geniuses who wouldn't immediately know how to get to special characters on the iPhone, or highly skilled pilots who can't answer the question, "what's a browser?" accurately.<p>These are pieces of topic knowledge, orthogonal to the question of "smart".<p>All of this said, having worked in consumer internet, I totally agree that the vast (read: <i>vast</i>) majority of internet users are absolute retards (or at least play them online).

Same idea, but on a bigger scale -- Arthur C. Clarke's third law:<p>"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."[1]<p>[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarkes_three_laws" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarkes_three_laws</a>

What frustrates me most is that I keep meeting people who seem to know less about their respective fields than one would expect them to, or they should at least know more about them than I or some other laic does.

<i>Apparently you can book tickets, check email and do all sorts of stuff online without knowing that each website has a distinct address called a URL.</i><p>Yes. The days of DNS as a mainstream human interface are numbered.

Hmm, I have the opposit feeling, that is compared to me many seem to be more intelligent. I stumble into many different fields and know some basics, but whereever I go people can tell me stuff I have never heard of and seem to comprehend stuff quickly when I explain it, which took me weeks to figure out...<p>So I usually go with the opposit approach and believe most people can explain something to me rather than believing I could figure everything out what they know by myself ...

Let's say I go to the mechanic with a light on in the dashboard, and he'll immediately notice the gas cap isn't tightly secured so it set off a car sensor. He probably went back to his mechanic friends, told them the story, and everyone laughed.<p>The computer and everything about it is our profession/hobby/passion and that is the main reason we know so much more than everyone else about it.

On the other hand, I sometimes wonder if I see dumb when all I talk about is my little startups and whatever jazz I'm into today.

It's just that everyone knows more about their own trade than others. My Dad's an automobile engineer and he thinks it's kinda funny that I do not really understand how a 4-wheel drive works...and I find it funny that he doesn't get why his computer hangs much more than mine (I use Linux :P )

This is a really good article when considering use cases for your users. Sometimes classifying it under 'stupid user syndrome' just isn't good enough, you have to understand that they are not unintelligent, they just don't grasp the same domain knowledge as we do.

Compared to me, most people ARE dumb, in my area of expertise.<p>What's that you say? Step out of my area of expertise?<p>No.

Don't disparage these people: they're the ones clicking on your ads ;-)

Well, I wouldn't directly equate technical knowledge with intelligence.<p>However, the statement "compared to you, most people seem dumb" isn't necessarily wrong -- 'you' must just be very intelligent.

I would love to read this, but the website is completely broken for me in Opera 10.63.<p>It breaks after one of the many many many cross site plugins is loaded.

now im curious. how does texting someone back on the iphone work?

It's a matter of <i>specialization</i>, if you will. Technology literacy is not the only talent in the world, but if that's what you choose to define yourself with, then it's easy for you to classify people in a related hierarchy.<p>Granted, this sort of relativism can only cover so much, since you'll also come across people who don't seem to know anything at all.

"People are not really stupid, it is just that you know a lot more. Don’t let knowledge blind you."<p>No, you dumb fuck. You're the idiot who knows nothing apart from useless technobabble that nobody will care about in 100 years - sorry, that should probably be 10 years.

Tech people, and especially the circle that is absorbed in the startup/techcrunch/combinator thing, have to be the most incredibly self absorbed, solipsistic bunch of twits in creation.<p>Most people are busy earning a living or living their lives doing something that actually matters, and the subtle nuance of details that tech startup types endlessly masturbate over is trivial background noise to most of the normal working populace.<p>To turn it all around, I have had the experience of explaining a legalism such as a specific application of labor or copyright law to a deep hard core techie. It's absolutely outside their universe and their frame of reference... does not compute... smoke starts coming out the ears... "Illogical! Norman, please coordinate..."