To sell well, a commercial software program needs to be user-friendly. But software manufacturers must be constrained by users’ intelligence levels to a certain extent. What IQ level does Microsoft build its products around for instance? Theoretically, can Microsoft Word, Excel and Access be used to test IQ?
I hope not!! If that were the case, then I’m a moron according to my machine!
I know for certain that the answer to the second question is no.
AudreyK: Why not? Some functions are easier to learn than others. Using conditional mail merge in Word or, say, creating an ‘advanced’ query in Access are more complicated exercises than typing and formatting text. Is this difference neglible to IQ testers?
And I realise, of course, that I am talking about software users’ intelligence here, not software creators’. Two different species. Someone needs to write a book about that. About how the users will fit into a “survivial of the brainiest” world.
You could use them to test IQ, but I wouldn’t place much weight in the results. Why not? Because those programs were not designed to test the same aspects of intelligence that standardized IQ tests do. Word, Excel, and Access were designed to handle words, numbers, and databases, respectively. And that’s all they were designed to do.
There are two major IQ tests used today: the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale and the Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale. The S-BIS measures verbal reasoning abilities, quantitative reasoning abilities, and short term memory. The WAIS is similar, but contains subtests in which responses are non-verbal.
Because the questions posed in these tests specifically address those aspects of intelligence, they yield results that tend to be both reliable and valid.
A software program not specifically designed to test those things could not give you similarly reliable and valid measures.
I suspect the question that’s being skirted around here is, Can you tell anything about a person’s IQ by how {well, quickly, easily} he learns to use software? The answer is still no. You would be measuring a specific skill, which is never a good measure of overall intelligence. Too many things can interfere. For instance, the MS software products you name were originally written for American users. Translations into other languages are notoriously spotty, and some of the idioms used may not translate well even to other varieties of English. So the native language of the subject could effect the results. Past familiarity with computers and software is also important. If you’ve used Word, you have some idea of the basic pattern of MS software and will apply that to learning Excel. Age will also play a role: the older your subject is, the more likely he’s nervous around computers and will therefore be slower to learn a new task.
It’s also my very unscientific opinion that many of the people who have trouble with MS software are actually trying too hard. It makes more sense if you turn off large numbers of neurons. But then, Windows drives me batty, so I would think that, wouldn’t I.
Heh. Not if this thread is to stay in GQ. Translating G.Nome is always a challenge, but for GQ purposes, let’s say that the question is “to what level of education do designers of consumer-oriented software target their products?”
I can answer that question. I’m a software engineer at one of the largest software companies in the US. We try to design it to the lowest common denominator, and assume the the user is a complete idiot. Whether or not we succeed in that is up for grabs, but I’m putting stuff in all the time to keep people from shooting themselves in the foot.
It takes more intelligence and programming skill to create a simple program and user interface that even a less intelligent person could use than it does to create a mess of a program and interface that only an unusually brilliant person can figure out.
For some reason, this tends to escape some people, who take a perverse pride in using poorly designed user-hostile software that your average idiot would not be able to use at all, as if it were beneath their dignity to use well-designed software products.
I will not point any specific fingers.
This really depends on the product and who the target audience is. A technical product like Visual C++ for instance is targeted towards software developers, and doesn’t waste time with talking paper clips. MS Word, on the other hand, is designed for anybody with a computer so they try to make it usable by anyone with a computer.
So if the software crashes during the test is that a plus or a minus for the test taker?
No biggie. Scan in a couple pages of a manual & use one of those grammar checker programs that also give you the reading level based on the US Army tests on the text. It’ll give a reading level.
I don’t know about that, but it sure is a pretty good indicator of the IQs of the developers themselves…
Yes, but the people who write the manual and the people who write the software are two separate groups. You might be able to determine what the target IQ was for the manual writers, but that won’t tell you about the target IQ for the software.
Another potential glitch in the software-as-IQ-test plan: different UI and functionality on different platforms. Word and Excel for Windows don’t have identical UI and feature sets as their Mac counterparts. You have to either force all your test-takers to use the same app on the same OS, putting some at a disadvantage, or you’re giving two different tests.
There are applications that have an almost identical UI/feature set on multiple platforms but Word and Excel are not among them.
Although these are useful and credible answers what about talking numbers here just for the sake of it? Putting aside the concept of learned intelligence, that there may be different types of intelligences and that the whole idea is over-simplistic, would anyone be prepared to put a number on the righthand side of the following list? (remember: the RIGHTHAND side).
How much intelligence is required to:
(a) Drive a car …
(b) Play backgammon …
© Use Microsoft Word’s basic functions …
(d) Use Microsoft Word’s advanced functions …
(e) Obtain a university degree …
(f) Be a SD General Questions moderator …