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« August 2008 | Main | November 2008 »
Office 2007, Gmail labels, and the widening technology gap...
October 27, 2008
I am teaching a class at work for the second time in a month, and it's causing me to really worry about those who are behind the tech gap and their collective chance of catching up.
It's a pretty basic class we call Windows OS: Beyond the Basics. There's a lot of theory talk about how file structures can be arranged, and how to work with directories and files, how Windows is designed, and how the internet works. Our audience are mostly low-income adults who are either unemployed or underemployed. Mostly people who were not exposed to computers within any sort of educational institution who are now finding themselves in need of basic computer skills.
The challenge I am seeing in the near future is that computers are no longer emulating real life. In the beginning, it seemed that graphical user interfaces did their best to make it easy for computer instructors to draw parallels between how a computer works with data and how we work with data in our real lives. The entire windows operating system, with its "desktop" and it's "folders" and "files" was ripe for analogy, and easily explainable even to the most rudimentary user.
However, it seems that designers, programmers, and engineers have been moving away from those reality-driven constructs and instead have begun to focus on creating interfaces that are intuitive only to those who are already participating in technology - further distancing the techno-illiterate.
Office 2007 is a good example of this. I have been using Microsoft Office products for at least the last 20 years of my life. When I sat down to use Excel 2007, I was somewhat taken aback. I had to search for things, nothing was intuitive, and it took some getting used to. I am a somewhat savvy tech user, so I was able to just sit there and figure it out. In fact, once I had figured out some of the major navigational differences, a lot of the changes seemed even ingenious to me. They made the interface more usable, even though it was less user friendly.
The problem with this, though, is that nothing in Office 2007 is linear. Just about everything is context-driven, and I am having a difficult time figuring out how we are going to teach our clients how to find things. It's possible I am underestimating our clients and our instructors, but that's not really the only example of how changes in technology are causing things to be more difficult to explain to the techno-illiterate.
As I am explaining how to organize information on various storage media, clients identify very strongly with the file cabinet analogy. We create folders withing folders withing folders, and store our files in those folders. This analogy is a simple one to grasp, but the way the windows os stores files now is not necessarily the way they will be stored in the near future. I can see operating systems moving more and more towards the label/tag approach, such as how emails are organized in gmail, to reduce redundancy and increase the efficiency. But how do you explain labels to folks who are just beginning to grasp the many and varied ways in which data is structured, ordered and rearranged. There is not tangible, real-life equivalent to applying a tag or label to a document and being able to filter information based on those tags or labels.
Technology is quickly stepping out of the bounds of reality. In many respects, this is increasing efficiency as well as proliferating possibility. We are no longer bound by hard-copy examples to dictate how we treat soft data. However, if we are not careful about educating our techno-illiterate populations, we risk creating an insurmountable barrier which becomes exponentially moreso with each interface upgrade.
Never Stop...
October 17, 2008
Dear you,
I remember what it was like to fall in love with life. Those days I spent describing the shape and texture of the clouds. The birds that gathered on wires, then in great droves issued forth into the sky like a never-ending ribbon. I told you those birds were my love, and the ribbon the ominous yet beautiful tie that bound us with resounding calls and the overwhelming orchestra of fluttering, flapping and finally smoothly gliding wings. The cries of crows stuck in my craw. Those were the days when I told you I wanted to know you inside out...wanted to lift the rocks of you and watch the crawling things beneath them recede into well-worn tunnels deep within. I followed them down those tunnels. I was not afraid, and I was not vengeful. I sat across the cave from you, eating candy as you eyed me suspiciously, until one day you sat next to me...and the next you held out your hand and allowed me to share.
And I shared.
And we sat there for a time, admiring the darkness. The birds were silent. I worried they were gone until I stole a glance at you from the corner of my eye and there they were again, rising from my gut to my throat that same fluttering, and a ribbon of sound passing from my lips to your soul.
And I held your hand and waited for the silent, dark season to pass. Remembering what it was like to fall in love with life...until it was time to fall in love with life again.