[jsherwani]

My PhD thesis focused on voice interface design for people with limited literacy skills. One of the most surprising discoveries for me was that menus and even lists of items aren’t natural concepts that exist outside of a context of literacy. Even for voice interfaces, a touch tone menu (“for X press 1, for Y press 2...”) was a lot harder to navigate than an equivalent voice-based menu (“would you like X, Y, or Z?”). As a side project during my final year of my thesis research, I wrote an iPhone app that unexpectedly propelled me into the world of entrepreneurship, so I ended up pursuing the startup life after I graduated. But this space is still fascinating to me.

[leoedin]

About 15 years ago when my grandfather was in the later years of his life we bought him a DVD player. He was an educated man, but he was never interested in computers or technology. Despite it being the mid-2000s he'd managed to completely ignore almost everything about computers until then.

When I was trying to teach him to use it, I was amazed to find that even the simple (in my mind) concept that pressing the "up" button the remote would move the menu selection up on the screen, and that to play the DVD you needed to select the "Play movie" option and choose "enter" was completely foreign to him.

I think as "digital natives" with both long term exposure and a real interest in technology, it's very easy to forget how many layers of implicit knowledge our systems are built on.

[ac2u]

>I think as "digital natives" with both long term exposure and a real interest in technology, it's very easy to forget how many layers of implicit knowledge our systems are built on.

Agreed, see replies to my comment on the linked post when trying to explain hardware usage from the perspective of older folks who aren't used to it, lots of replies along the lines of "they can this through Settings->General->blah"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23598685

[rPlayer6554]

Maybe that explains why Alexa is popular? I never really understood it since of it's limited capacity. I guess I don't see the appeal because I'm a programmer and used to high capacity, low user friendly tools like terminal UI/UXs.

[jsherwani]

Yes, and I think what’s interesting is to consider is that the ability to use a terminal is a very recent (and from a certain perspective, strange) skill, considered from the perspective of the kind of hardware we have for information access, storage and transmission.

What’s far more “normal” is storytelling (with heroes and villains), rhythm & rhyme, and lots of repetition. But even simple conversational interfaces are way more normal (and fit our mental hardware well) than terminal-y interactions.

[nsajko]

You're confusing old with normal and your conclusion attempts to "appeal to nature" (a well known error of logic): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature

[rushikesh98]

In context of user interface, "Natural" = "Familiar". So, very low barrier to extract value, less chance of making mistakes.

[lborsato]

It's the best kitchen timer in the world, no matter how many dishes you're cooking.

[balabaster]

As a software engineer that spent a great deal of his life embedded in UI philosophy, I'm still so lazy when it comes to learning other systems. My cell phone for instance - the iPhone, there are still things that my girlfriend shows me how to do on it that I had no idea about. I just can't be bothered to learn most technology beyond what I need to use it. I've got too much else to spend time on. I'm sure I don't know half of what my TV does, I use Alexa to turn the lights on and off, timers and alarms and that's about it.

Most of my devices are used almost exclusively for Teams meetings, communications or actual software development. When I'm raking through other software, I'm often exposed to UI concepts that make zero sense to me, yet they seem intuitive to many others that are beyond my comprehension. I wonder if this is because I'm getting old or if it's because people being forced to learn bizarre UI concepts and just accept it and go along with it.

It's weird to me that people just seem to accept complicated systems and I'm still stuck on the "This is too complicated to be useful to anyone. We're supposed to have computers working for us by now, not us working for our computers!" model.

[MonaroVXR]

I switch between Windows 10, Windows 11, MacOS Monterey and Pop!_OS interchangeably, easy. My main OS is Linux and mostly in the terminal. I can't comprehend that you cannot "figure out" different UI's.

[balabaster]

Are you familiar with spoon theory?

https://www.healthline.com/health/spoon-theory-chronic-illne...

I have from 25-50 or maybe more things I need to get done in my normal everyday life - most of which either improve my life in some significant way, or improves someone else's in a way that pays my bills. I run out of spoons about 15 before I need to learn a new something that will add minor improvement to my life in some way. This includes things like holding down a key longer gives you the alternative characters for it, or a new operating system or device, or all the little features on my TV or the many thousands of ways Alexa can be harnessed to do some really cool things.

On a day where I have nothing to do and I feel particularly inclined, I might learn one of those things - but chances are I'll spend it doing something else that brings me joy. Cooking, spending time with loved ones, going for a ride on my bike or a swim. These are the choices and trade offs I make. Admittedly, that hampers my ability to use certain devices because I don't understand them completely, but it gives me time to enjoy my life in other ways.

[MonaroVXR]

I didn't know about the spoon theory, my comment was a bit snarky I guess? (My apologies)

I can't work with two screens, there have it.

I didn't touch MacOS for a long time, but I'm able (and I think you can too) to get manual, guide, documentation in seconds and adapt to it. I'm sure you can do the same thing as me.

I must say that I'm all about efficiency and administration outside computers. (Do you have ever thought about gaming? To use the right skill slot, to gain maximum velocity at that given level?) I apply "gaming skills" to my life.

I'm going to make a blog about it.

[urthor]

Speech Interfaces for Information Access By Low Literate Users I presume?

[tpoacher]

I would also be interested to read your thesis, if you don't mind linking to it :)

edit: also, pop looks very nice! congrats!

[_boffin_]

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jsherwan/JS-thesis.pdf

[jsherwani]

Yes, that’s it! An easier and shorter read may be the final paper I published in that domain, which talks more about the difference between literate and low/non-literate users:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jsherwan/pubs/orality-hcid-itid09.pdf

[thomasz]

Is it online somewhere?