[HN Gopher] Text is not the enemy: How illiterates use their mob...
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Text is not the enemy: How illiterates use their mobile phones
Author : kvee
Score : 69 points
Date : 2022-02-10 20:41 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.researchgate.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.researchgate.net)
| MPSimmons wrote:
| Very eye-opening paper. Thanks for posting this. I have never
| considered most of the things brought up in this. Really good to
| read.
| newsbinator wrote:
| > The speed at which they traversed the phone menus was the same
| as for literate people. We often had to ask our interviewees to
| slow down when they were showing us how they performed certain
| tasks on their phones. They mastered important functionality
| through rote learning: "After I have clicked on this icon I need
| to go down twice and then - click! - I'm done." This was the same
| technique that they used to learn how to operate other important
| digital interfaces such as ATMs and game consoles. Family or
| friends assisted during the memorization phase and they repeated
| the procedures in their presence as many times as needed.
| lotyrin wrote:
| This reminds me of a certain facet of computer literacy:
| exploration. There are users who will only seek out menu items
| in software if they already know they are there and where,
| compared to users who will seek out the items they are looking
| for and can imagine that they probably do exist somewhere.
|
| It's unimaginable to the latter user that one would possibly
| have to "learn" how to use Google Docs having only ever been
| exposed to MS Word, while the former is completely lost because
| the menus have to be re-learned and all the possibilities
| available to them must be re-memorized.
| hughrr wrote:
| I was a contractor once and was basically used as a scapegoat
| after being asked to move some UI bits for the sake of
| consistency. This was moving the OK and Cancel buttons on
| every single dialog window so they were in the same
| consistent place.
|
| The customers shit the bed and the change rolled back and an
| "unspecified contractor" was blamed for "an unauthorised
| change".
|
| I chose not to renew that one.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| They should have done them one at a time. You can
| reasonably gaslight the client that way. I sometimes forget
| whether or not OK should be on the left or right of Cancel.
| bcraven wrote:
| https://help.duo.com/s/article/7231?language=en_US
|
| The Duo authentication app recently swapped the 'Accept'
| and 'Deny' buttons and it was unbelievably frustrating.
| newsbinator wrote:
| Anybody have ideas on why the age divide on expectation +
| exploration vs. memorization seems so stark?
|
| In my experience the top predictor of whether a person can
| use a computer to do what they intended to do is age. Not IQ,
| not other mechanical or technical competence, not education,
| not cultural background, not linguistic aptitude, not reading
| speed, not creativity, not engineering or product design
| experience... mainly age.
|
| (with outliers of course)
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| My guess is it's about how curious about new things you
| were when computers got popular. Computers are, compared to
| a lot of real world devices, a lot more complicated than
| pretty much any consumer tool that predates them, but also
| more forgiving. Most consumer appliances before computers
| had at most a couple of settings, all of which were clearly
| defined and handed to you. Anything beyond that involved
| aggressive tinkering that may or may not go well.
|
| Computers, on the other hand, have interfaces that are
| vastly larger than any human brain could hope to contain.
| So they require exploration. This comes naturally to
| children, less so to fully matured adults, and is extremely
| rare in people middle-aged or beyond. So you get a line
| based on how old they were when they first got their hands
| on a computer.
| code_duck wrote:
| That makes me think of how many times I've had to ask people
| "what does the error message on the screen say?" or tell my
| parents "the words that it says on the screen - read them,
| the program/website is trying to tell you something". When it
| comes to software many users are functionally illiterate
| because they don't even try to read alert windows or error
| messages, assuming that they will be meaningless.
| ehutch79 wrote:
| THIS.
|
| So much this.
| svachalek wrote:
| Yup, I've seen this a lot. This type of user basically
| operates like a script, they move through a memorized list
| of steps and when they can't go forward they simply throw
| an exception.
| tn1 wrote:
| not even really an exception, they're more a like a PHP
| script that just ignores errors and continues
| wyattpeak wrote:
| I've made that gripe too, but there's something about error
| messages though that makes them very hard to take in. I
| don't know why, but I debug crap for a living, and I still
| every now and then find myself searching for a bug in
| Google, only to realise that there are instructions for
| resolving it in the error message.
|
| I can't quite put my finger on why I can't adapt. It's some
| combination of the facts that 1) there's often a huge dump
| of information, much of it so technical that it's useful
| only to the developers, 2) it's fairly rare that it offers
| a truly useful suggestion, and 3) many of the messages I
| encounter ask me to do something that makes things easy for
| the developer rather than the user (update the software,
| contact the manufacturer).
|
| I think it's something we as an industry ought to work
| harder on, because I don't think the failure is only in the
| users. I think, although I can't explain exactly why, we're
| communicating very poorly.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > they don't even try to read alert windows or error
| messages, assuming that they will be meaningless
|
| I work in IT and I can assure you that software developers
| have been doing their best for the past 20 years to live up
| to that expectation.
| 6510 wrote:
| I'm currently breaking my head trying to fix a "you
| didn't fill out all fields" error for a form with only
| hidden fields. I keep thinking how useful the message
| must be to the user.
| gknoy wrote:
| I still recall my father having various error messages from
| software (browsers, website, Word, etc), and when I'd
| translate them it was almost always a case of the error
| message being meaningful to me _but not in those words_,
| and so when I'd translate them for him he'd ask, "why
| didn't the error message say THAT?". It still is something
| I think about occasionally when trying to write logging or
| error messages -- how we got there, how to fix it, etc.
| imoverclocked wrote:
| Beautifully put. I've experienced this dichotomy so many
| times in many different contexts. Being literate and being
| able to explore are extremely empowering gifts.
| lkbm wrote:
| This is no surprise to me.
|
| My dad wrote batch files when I was a kid. 98.bat give a list
| of items numbered 1-15. 3.bat then took you to a games
| directory wherein 99.bat gave you another numbered list list of
| 30+ games to choose from.
|
| I memorized nearly every number on both menus before I could
| read.
| gleenn wrote:
| I was learning Japanese in Tokyo while also working on a small-
| business accounting app. Japanese accounting is extremely
| specific, so even for someone enrolled in classes, there was no
| way I would be learning all those kanji any time soon. I
| impressed a Japanese co-worker though, because I quickly learned
| visually where the buttons I needed to click were so I could copy
| the app features from iPhone to Android. Turns out you don't have
| to be able to read almost anything as long as you see something
| used correctly and can remember button locations visually etc.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Chinese characters are hard to learn even if you are Chinese.
| Places that use them have high illiteracy rates but many people
| learn how to "fake it".
| gibolt wrote:
| This is very much untrue. Writing with a pen, maybe. Rare,
| obscure characters from ancient texts, sure. Basic daily-use
| characters are understandable to even most of the elderly in
| super remote villages.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| When I was young I played a lot of Japanese games on the MSX
| like this: try stuff, see what happens, memorize, repeat as
| needed. I played through SD Snatcher and some other games like
| this.
|
| Kids can have a lot of patience in a weird way like that. Today
| I'd probably give up after a few minutes.
| qwertycrackers wrote:
| When my younger brother was very young (perhaps 5 or 6 years
| old), he inherited my old Gameboy Color with my copy of
| Pokemon Crystal, which I had left saved at some random point
| midway through the game. He, not knowing how to read, never
| realized that there was such a thing as saves or progress in
| the game. In his mind, that save point was his "start point",
| where he would always begin his adventures and the pokemon I
| had left him with were the only ones he ever used. He loved
| to run around in the wild battling pokemon and occasionally
| making very accidental progress away from his "start point".
|
| One time, he managed to stumble his way into using Cut to
| remove a tree and entered a whole new world of things to
| explore! After a while he become totally lost, and wanting to
| return to familiar territory he simply restarted the Game Boy
| and was right back where he knew. We continue to find much
| humor in the degree to which children can make any random
| experience a fun adventure.
| wincy wrote:
| My daughter loves to play "that spaceship game" (Among Us)
| despite not knowing how to read. She had great fun running
| around and looking at everything. She knows how to join
| lobbies. It's probably good she doesn't know how to read as
| I'd imagine there are a lot of very angry 12 year olds
| throwing expletives her way for being "bad" at the game.
| mgarciaisaia wrote:
| Japanese was something we Argentinians really didn't know back
| in the 90's when I was a kid (we still don't usually know it,
| but now I know some people who are picking up classes).
|
| But then there was Captain Tsubasa's FamiCom game, which some
| friends had, only in Japanese - and it amazed me how easily
| they went through all of the menus to change whatever settings
| they wanted.
|
| Kids, spare time, the desire to play some videogames, and a
| country whose market wasn't that attractive - an awesome
| combination.
| wccrawford wrote:
| I worked at Office Depot for a while, and Chinese couple
| brought in their laptop with a problem. OD didn't do repairs,
| but I had worked at a Gateway 2000 call center and a local
| computer shop, so I knew my way around.
|
| Their computer was completely in Chinese, but that didn't stop
| me from just quickly clicking through to the control panel and
| fixing the problem.
|
| They were practically slack-jawed staring at me, and then
| asked, "Do you speak Chinese?" I told them I just know where
| the buttons are. :D
|
| It was experiences like that (helping a customer beyond what
| the store supported, in extreme situations) that make me miss
| retail sometimes. All the BS makes sure I don't go back.
| gtm1260 wrote:
| This reminded me why I loved my retail job, but I think its
| partially because I was retail inside an amusement park: I
| missed out on most of the BS (people were generally very
| happy to be there/ having a great day).
| crooked-v wrote:
| From that I find myself assuming it was one of the smaller
| parks, to avoid the "people going insane over wringing
| every last bit of 'fun' out of an incredibly expensive
| vacation" problem.
| ravedave5 wrote:
| Small sample size, but still very interesting. I was shocked that
| some people think text should be removed from the UI for them. I
| would hope the goal would be for them to learn to read and I have
| to imaging after seeing certain words like "close" or "save" over
| and over they would get some basic understanding of the shape of
| the word to help them in new applications or other areas of their
| life.
| httpz wrote:
| It always blows my mind seeing a 4-year-old, who can't even read,
| navigating YouTube on their parent's phone better than some
| adults I know with PhDs.
|
| Though as a kid I do remember playing RPG games in a language I
| don't know at all.
| [deleted]
| jsherwani wrote:
| 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.
| thomasz wrote:
| Is it online somewhere?
| urthor wrote:
| Speech Interfaces for Information Access By Low Literate Users
| I presume?
| tpoacher wrote:
| I would also be interested to read your thesis, if you don't
| mind linking to it :)
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Favourite fact of the moment : illiterate humans built the walls
| of jericho as it was built 2,000 years before writing was
| invented.
|
| Text is a jet fuel for humanity, not a requirement for success. I
| am only saddened that "we" have let down those 800M by not giving
| them a basic education
| drcross wrote:
| I know someone with very bad dyslexia and it's not that he
| didn't get a basic education, it's that he can't understand
| written text or menu items more than one layer deep. He calls
| if wants to communicate which is very endearing but I also have
| major misgivings with modern UI paradigms. The "three dashed
| lines" that you see everywhere are infuriating.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Do visual icons like the three lines for a menu help or hurt
| the usability of an application for people with dyslexia?
|
| I had assumed iconography was a boon for illiterate people-
| thinking primarily of symbols on shop signs or a striped
| barbers pole, for example.
| serverlessmom wrote:
| This is really interesting. It reminds me of a conversation I had
| recently with a friend of mine who struggles a lot with spelling.
| His first language is English and even so sometimes it is hard to
| decipher what he means when he messages me. Recently he asked me
| how to spell something and I said, "You spell it exactly how it
| sounds," and he told me that doesn't help him and he didn't
| understand what that meant. So I spelled the word out loud and
| sounded it out as I went. At the end he told me that his brain
| doesn't work that way- that it's nearly impossible for him to
| hold the sounds in his head while he tries to spell. I was really
| quite awestruck by that distinct differences in our brains.
| pwdisswordfish9 wrote:
| I can't blame him, English has a pretty irregular spelling.
| garrickvanburen wrote:
| English mostly isn't.
| steinjones wrote:
| "You spell it exactly how it sounds" such a bullshit advice
| when the language in the context is English, which one-to-one
| letter-phoneme correspondence is hilariously bad.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Well, that's the point. You tell someone to spell it exactly
| how it sounds if it _is_ one of the words that is spelled
| phonetically.
| monkeybutton wrote:
| This reminds me of a coworker who recently immigrated from
| Brazil asking about the pronunciations of some English words
| and being astonished that we don't just use accents to
| differentiate it. Like, just use accents. No more ambiguity
| and problem solved.
| bdamm wrote:
| Right? Though the march of enlightenment is eternal, suffrage
| is not bourne but rather embraced. Through bright corridors
| stream draughts of fairies, otherworldly.
|
| Phonetics lies, asunder.
| ruined wrote:
| *borne
|
| *faeries
| demadog wrote:
| What is that quote from? Google comes up blank.
| wincy wrote:
| My wife can't spell and I just tell her "hey just memorize how
| to spell everything". I'm convinced that's what we all actually
| do, at least with English.
| duncan-donuts wrote:
| I know this is common but I constantly mispronounce words
| phonetically in my head so I remember how to spell them.
| qq66 wrote:
| You can only "spell it exactly how it sounds" in languages like
| Italian or Spanish, not in English.
| lelandfe wrote:
| "Oaxaca," just like it sounds
| buu700 wrote:
| That's interesting. Sounds like he may have auditory aphantasia
| (which I only know is a thing because of the few times it's
| come up on HN lately).
| smackeyacky wrote:
| Funny story from a school teacher:
|
| One of the kids she has is determinedly illiterate (7 years old,
| pretty poor family background) but said kid, after "borrowing"
| one of the class iPads during lunch hour managed to search up a
| pile of pornography and got caught.
|
| Teachers were somewhat perplexed how this kid who barely manages
| to write his own name searches up some fairly complicated terms.
| He did it by simply using the iPad speech recognition system.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Kids can do genius stuff, they are very very open to
| experimentation and out of the box thinking(as they don't have
| a box to start with, I guess).
|
| I recall someones kid discovering that clicking on ads in games
| opens the safari within the app, finding their way from there
| into Google, therefore bypassing the parental restrictions.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Suggestion engines are powerful too. When my son was just about
| 3, he could navigate YouTube from and arbitrary point to
| Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends or a particular garbage
| truck video.
| teunispeters wrote:
| On a related note, my daughter (grade 1) uses speech
| recognition to do spell checking and confirm how a word is
| spelled. Mind, she does complicated words like "imposter" and
| "infected".
|
| (real example, and yes she's found "Among Us" playthrough
| videos...)
| 6510 wrote:
| I know a guy who uses whatsapp by clicking on peoples pictures,
| using voice and video calls and sending audio messages. It
| doesn't seem like there is a problem.
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