It seems 1990-2010 was the golden age for picking computers up “on the fly”.
Something I’ve noticed as an elder millennial working in IT is that there’s an assumption by older generations that because zoomers have grown up with smartphones that they’ll automatically be proficient with tech as a whole, but it’s not correct in my experience and I really think it’s doing them a disservice. They’re better than anyone else I’ve met at navigating apps/mobile UI and can be super efficient working that way but tend to struggle as much as boomers with more traditional computers, because it’s simply not what they grew up with and no one really sat them down to formally teach them. We’re definitely going to see more of the “appification” of common office tools and programs as the zoomers and Generation Alpha progress in their careers and start outnumbering the older generations in the workplace in my opinion. If AI hasn’t put us all out of a job by then anyway.
There is another article I read where colleges had to teach Computer Science majors basic computer concepts like folders because the students relied on search for everything.
It would be like how almost everyone knew how to work on their own car in the 40’s and 50’s because you needed to in order to get the car to run. Nowadays, you don’t need that information to drive a car.
I think your car metaphor is even more apt than you meant it, as over time both car manufacturers and mobile platforms have gotten more and more hostile to users actually being able to do maintenance or self service.
To be fair modern cars won’t even let you. E.g. if you disconnect the battery of a modern car, there’s a high chance that it completely breaks (because some chips reset without power).
I doubt that they are actually that skilled with mobile apps, since most things on a phone are “use them as they are or just don’t”. You can’t really customize things, or do things in your own ways. E.g. ask someone to send you an original, uncompressed photo on Whatsapp.
there’s an assumption by older generations that because zoomers have grown up with smartphones that they’ll automatically be proficient with tech as a whole
That’s like thinking someone knows how to cook because they can order at McDonalds.
It’s an absurd premise, but it’s true! I teach HS computer science and always take time to teach them basic skills about Excel — like what it’s even capable of.
That’s great. Teaching them what it is capable of opens new vistas (not that Vista) and that there are lots of possibilities with other software as well. Not a MS fan at all but Excel is powerful and the point comes through regardless of the platform.
My big point is always, "I don’t expect you to memorize all of these things, but rather to understand what sort of thing is possible in Excel/Google Sheets. Hopefully it’ll stick in the back of their head, and 10 years later they’ll look like a wizard in their office job, if nothing else.
Counter point: Nobody knows how to operate printers and scanners because they are not build by people that are tech literate.
Give a printer or scanner a proper UI using the design principles that modern apps use and see how easy newer generations pick things up
I am convinced that printer companies make their products as esoteric and intimidating to the average person as possible on purpose so that they can sell expensive servicing packages to businesses.
Id wager that they dont put too much money into R&D and just pay one guy to port over the same code from their last last last generation printer to the new one. Over time its become an unrecognizable mess that is just hacked into working and no one ever takes a look under the hood. Their main market is the ink anyways, so making the printer good at what it does is an afterthought
Ah yes, the McDonald’s ice cream machine model
This. The core principle of intuitive UI is reusing ui elements that are familiar. That’s the reason every elevator has buttons, and that’s why you can intuitively operate every elevator you encounter.
The problem is that not everyone is familiar with the same things. Many people of older generations (those that have stopped keeping up with technology) are used to buttons, that’s why a blue text doesn’t immediately mean clickable to them.
On the other hand there’s no right click on phones so younger generations that are familiar with phone UIs may not immediately come to the conclusion that there’s more options when pressing the other mouse button.
There are printer that has their own app or support apps implementing the protocols so you can print via bluetooth for example. The tricky part comes from 1. cost 2. when you do the scan©. The fancier printer that comes with a tablet attached to it doesn’t do “more” compare to the cheaper traditional layout version that can also connect to computer/apps.
Then when you do the scan and copy, it’s the knowledge which tray does the feed and which mode to set the machine to operate, which does require some manual reading or guidance. But it’s not hard to figure out as well.
Hardly a Gen-z specific issue. Office printer/scanners have always been confusing.
as a old timer I feel that it’s not that “complex” if you are allowed to experiment without someone looking at you with disappointment. Like there was one time I was trying to figure out how to do double side copying on a machine I never used before, the HR come by and just say you do this print one side and then shuffle the paper into the feeder to print the other side. I tell her that the machine can do double side copying/scanning cause it’s similar tray layout I saw in prior company. She let me do my experiment and I figure out how to set the modes and it works as intended. This saved her lots of time having to stick with the machine where she could’ve just spend sometime to figure out as well. People’s pride usually gets in their way of learning.
side note: stick fresh printed paper back into printing machine can easily cause paper jam. That’s on top of the risk where you printed with wrong orientation/side if you didn’t follow the marking direction properly.
lastly, it’s paperless era, please encourage the folks that needs to do the papers to use docusign or something to accomplish the same task. we really don’t need to waste all those paper printing information that’s only needed for a 30mins meeting. when we can all see it on say, google doc.(or whatever sharing platform. )
Yeah, I’m not Gen Z and I’ve always found office printers unnecessarily complicated. Like, I’ve barely learned how to use a fax machine, do you have to make it even more confusing?
Printers feel like they’re still trying to use metaphors and analogies to pre-printer technology, which very few people even remember anymore. It’d be like if we still used the same training they used on the first cars comparing them to horse and buggy setups today. No one would get it.
Scanners are basically (and most of the time literally) printers. And printers are of the devil.
I’m not Gen Z btw, I’m on the tail end of Gen X and an IT professional of twenty years.
It’s like they figured out printer firmware/GUI in 1981 and then have never touched it again. They’re competing with the TI-83 in terms of longevity at this point.
I mean yeah, printers really try to behave like somewhat sophisticated typewriters in a way. There are so many things that I suppose used to make sense early on but that really should have been refactored again and again over time. But since the technology is so insanely widespread and backward compatibility being a must-have… tech debt is a bitch.
And that’s why IT people hate printers.
The scanner part is the only reason why I haven’t smashed that damn printer yet… I hate printers so much, I’d rather almost pay for a print service that just ships the printed documents to me on the next day.
Yeah, I really like my 3D printers even though they can be pretty fiddly as well.
But paper printers man, not even once.
This is a real issue, but scanners are the worst example because no generation can figure them out.
Honestly I expect, just like in the early days of personal computing, that Gen Z and beyond will suffer from PC illiteracy. The main issue is that phones and tablets are being used almost exclusively during school and on personal time, so they have no idea what Windows nor even Mac looks and feels like. What happens with Zoomer gets an office job for the first time? They have to figure out how to use Windows and Office for the first time. It’s crazy to think that your 70 yr old Grandma and your 17 yr old Nephew could potentially be on the same level of knowledge of how to use Windows, Office, etc…
It’s insane how true this is. I’ve actually worked with some kids that have no idea how to use windows, let alone know how to type. It’s so odd, and almost disorienting at times, to experience this from both those older than me (parents, etc) and those younger than me.
I’ve had conversations with young people who started work in an office environment that required a lot of text editing/text creation, and they didn’t know how to type on a keyboard.
On a physical keyboard on their work computer, they used a kind of two finger search-and-type system.
Their opinion was that typing on a physical keyboard was an outdated skill that just wasn’t required any more.
I asked them if they used voice-to-text or some other input method instead, and they said no.
Are that point, I just talked away, because I didn’t have any polite follow-up questions, and we simply didn’t seem to speak the same language.
I wonder if in the future people will use their smartphone as an input decive for desktop PCs. If they really can’t be bothered to learn how to use a proper keyboard, that could maybe still be a lot faster than typing with your index fingers.
Yeah, I get that, and hypothetically you could just use a mobile device for text creation, using your preferred method of inputting text (e.g. a swipe keyboard, or a stylus with text recognition, etc.) on the mobile device and then send it all to the desktop.
I asked about that, and I didn’t get a definitive answer. The conversation was more like:
“You don’t get it, we grew up with touchscreen devices, physical keyboards are outdated.”
“So do you use voice to text or something?”
“No! You don’t get it. We grew up with mobile devices!”
“But… How do you enter text!?”
“Nobody cares about your typewriting skills!!”
They stared at me.
I stared back.
The generational gap felt like the Grand Canyon.
I was taught how to type on a keyboard. I much prefer using my phone to type things because I can do it in any position rather than sitting at a desk.
I’ve taught a basic web programming class to 17/18 year old’s. Hardly anyone had ever heard of file extensions (windows by default doesn’t show them anymore), and most of them didn’t understand the concept of folders and files, at all. I was shocked.
I spent 4 hours with them before the whole class was able to create a “index.html” file inside a specific folder, it was like teaching old people. I now feel a lot safer in my programming job.
Perhaps PCs will become obsolete. Even programming languages.
The most useful skill set for Gen-whatevers of the future will be winning an hours long debate with their personal AI on why it should get out of its digital bed and be productive today.
Just yesterday I was watching an episode of Star Trek DS9 where Sisko and Bashir get transported in time back to San Francisco in 2024 and Bashir has to examine a patient without a tricorder or any other equipment. It made me wonder how these people are able to have so much ingenuity and rote knowledge when they have computers and AI to take care of literally everything for them in 99.9% of circumstances.
I think this can happen to any generation. I’m currently training someone at work who allegedly has a Bachelors degree in Computer Science who had to be reminded of the keyboard shortcuts for copy and paste.
Maybe the main problem is that they don’t have the concept of trial and error. Yeah sure a printer has weird UX, but just press buttons and see what happens 😁.
To be fair, printers are full of ghosts and demons. Even if you get to know how a printer works for years it’ll still randomly just do some crazy shit you weren’t expecting.
People always wonder at my skill in picking up unfamiliar UIs, and its always just that I explore the interface thoroughly and press every likely-looking button
When I was in my early teens I got my hands on a copy of Photoshop 7 from my granddad and spent so much time on tutorial websites and Worth1000, messing around with the tools and making fake digital post-its and stuff like that. I think Photoshop is definitely up there in terms of complex UIs, so having that hands-on experience was crucial in learning how to learn other UIs.
It also helped that a lot of the tutorials by that point were for CS3, which had warp features that 7 didn’t have, and I had to experiment to find workarounds for the missing tools.
The only device where that has failed me was a washing maschine with a mixed analog and digital UI.
With the old ones you could just turn the knobs. With the new ones you basically have a full touchscreen App interface. But for that period where things started to get more digital but not completely, it’s absolutely awful.
This is something we see with our students at school. I think we do them a disservice assuming they have skills we had to acquire as technology progressed. Even something as fundamental as typing is not being actively taught.
Even something as fundamental as typing is not being actively taught.
To be fair, you can’t really teach that. We had classes at school which helped a little, but most of my skill came from Chatting on MSN with my school friends…
You can, 10 finger tying / touch typing at least. Someone can’t really figure that out for themselves without spending tons of time thinking on an efficient way to type.
I never read the manual to learn how to use one. Just trial and errored it.
We sure this isn’t a consequence of our intolerance for “failure” conditioning a generation to just stick to what they know instead of experimenting?
It comes down to good interface engineering. There was a time engineers were really good at making complex systems simple to operate. Now it seems they’re good at making simple systems complex to operate. It seems to coincide with most companies outsourcing design to cheap labor markets.
On another trend in interface engineering, I think a lot of “apps” are easy to use because they simply don’t provide options. This is how you will use our software and that’s all there is to it. The plus side is simplicity, the down side is inflexibility.
I’m pretty good at dealing with systems of all kinds myself. I get really infuriated at times by the lack of flexibility for the sake of simplicity in systems now. You can always read a manual, but you can’t easily change programming or design.
I get really infuriated at times by the lack of flexibility for the sake of simplicity in systems now.
Me too. I especially hate this trend of implying that your computer is a box full of esoteric black magic that you could never understand. I work in IT, I’m reasonably good with these things, error messages don’t scare me. Telling me “something went wrong uwu” doesn’t help me or the users I support at all. Stop insulting my intelligence and tell me what went wrong, or at least give me an error code that I can search for dammit!
Yes that’s another problem, assumed intelligence on the part of the designer. If they assume the average user is not going to be able to deal with the most simple factors, they’re not going to design a mechanism to deal with them.
Though I don’t know, maybe designers are right about that. I’ve always been able to RTFM for any problem I’ve run into and deal with it. Maybe that’s too much to ask of the average consumer. Still it baffles me how we can have people designing things like breakthrough AI on one hand and others getting stumped by a printer interface on the other.
I’ve seen this with my Zoomer sister-in-law. She just recently learned how to use Microsoft - their home and school system was entirely Apple. She’s still not great at troubleshooting.
It’s happening a lot, and I see a lot of boomers using the “haw haw kids stupid” behind it, but it’s not them, it’s the parents fault, and it’s really sad honestly.
I learned typing in 6th grade, we had computer classes where we learned Microsoft and Mac, we learned how to do word and excel. A lot of that got me ready for office life.
Now parents and schools just expect that it’s easy, but as we’re seeing they may pick it up faster, but unless they have a need to learn it they won’t. I feel empathy for these kids who are going to be entering the workforce who were failed.
Generally those systems shouldn’t be too different. If you know one you should get the grasp of the other after using it for a bit. Maybe special settings and stuff can be a bit confusing…
I think that this is not applicable to all gen Z
The scanner at my last job was great. It was part of the printer, set up by central IT, and could send the scanned document to my email address. 10/10 scanner.
The AIO printer / copier / scanner I bought myself for WFH sucks as a scanner. Mostly because I’m on Linux, and there just isn’t an easy way to get the documents from the scanner to my computer. I often just use Photoscan on my phone.
I’ve got a Brother AIO printer/scanner, and it has a Linux driver. Even for the scan function.
I can start the brscan service on my Linux machine and then just press the scan to PC button on the scanner and the scans land in ~/brscan/ over the network.
… I had gone to the Brother site for drivers, but not noticed any of the scanner stuff. It’s less than intuitive, but once it works, it works! Thanks!
For your home office, see this article and then pass it along to friends. It just makes everything easier: https://www.theverge.com/23642073/best-printer-2023-brother-laser-wi-fi-its-fine
A few years back I bought a networked xerox scanner for that reason - its not ideal and rather outdated, but at that time was pretty much the only thing with a document feeder capable of generating multi page PDFs without having to control it from app or computer.
I’d be thrilled if it had a USB port, and I could just have it scan to USB. But nooooooo…
