Saturday, December 10, 2016

I'm practicing right now!

Are you an expert computer user? If you're reading this post, likely you are in the top 5% of computer users in the world.

 I was surprised by that article, but perhaps I shouldn't be. It's said that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert at something, and I use a computer in some form probably 90% of my waking hours and have done so for, hm, between 15-18 years? I've definitely got my practice in.

The interesting lesson to take away from this is that expert experts are the ones designing software and writing code, and they literally cannot see things from the most elementary users' point of view. They can't un-know what they know, or lose the understanding or assumptions they have about how software works.

I think actually this goes a long way towards explaining my frustration when dealing with a digital tool that is badly designed - the coders didn't even stop to think whether the end user would have different assumptions than they do.


  1. Interesting! There are so many ways to use a computer that I think expert status can really be niched down in so many different ways.

  2. I work with a lot of developers and so I definitely don't feel like I'm in the top any percent of computer users but then I also work with grown adults who can't manage to open a new browser tab so then I can believe it. It's definitely relative.


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