How do you learn how your tech works?

In My Humble Opinion
21

My mother recently had a problem with “not finding the email”. Eventually, 1.Nephew “installed email” but it was a different email and it was in her tablet and it didn’t open aything aaaand with such fabulous explanations over the phone, I said “ok, put a big note on the front of the fridge and I’ll see what broke next time I come visit.”

What my mother couldn’t find was the shortcut which opens her browser to her email’s page. Nobody had been able to figure out that “it’s got a bird like this one but it’s in another place and it says ‘correo’” meant that she was looking for a shortcut. Everybody was using The Niece’s account. Solution: delete every account except “Mom” (baby permissions, no password) and “Nava” (admin, betcherasspassword). Oh, and the “installed email”? 1.Nephew had discovered that my mother’s tablet is linked to a gmail account that has only been used to install games. For some reason, opening the M in the tablet didn’t miraculously allow my mother access on the desktop computer to the email address she uses as president of a local association.

And this was with “assistance” from four grownups and a teenager, all of whom use computers daily.

22

I always to go the Settings icon and all the menu options for a new device or new app. That tells me 95% of what I need to figure out just by looking around. If there’s something I know that I want to do but can’t figure out, I Google it. That’s another 4%.

The remaining 1% are things that you would never find on your own. On my iPad, you can swipe sideways with four fingers at once to switch which application is in focus. I would never have figured that out but it is very useful. I found that in a third-party iPad guide app that I think cost me a couple of dollars. Also, if you double-tap with three fingers, you bring up the accessibility menu, which can allow you to change the screen for things like zooming or high contrast. I found that in a Google search trying to make the screen dimmer than it’s dimmest setting for use in the dark.

I am 62 but a software development manager so maybe more tech-savvy (or more tech adventurous) than the average person.

23

As a former computer designer and machine language programmer, I can usually intuit ways of doing things, especially because I’ve probably seen some other program or piece of tech which does it the same way.
If that fails, Google and YouTube work fine.

It is a little known fact that God had no clue about how to create the universe, but was able to find a YouTube video describing just that.

24

I think it’s the same way it’s always been. People learn to use technology by seeing other people using it.

Older people, like myself, just notice it when we deal with some new technology like computers or dvd players or smart phones because we learned these technologies as adults. But it’s essentially no different than learning how to operate a car or a rotary phone or a chain saw.

25

Yes, this. It’s not just random fiddling because I’ve always owned similar items. And if I can find the specific function easily, I google it.

Professionally, I’ve been kind of annoyed lately because the proprietary software that I use for product setup ( and these are complex multi-featured home automation products ) aren’t released with a text-based manual/help files anymore. Instead the manufacturers make a bunch of freaking YouTube videos. I’m certainly not inclined to watch a video to figure out how to do something. And these manufacturers haven’t figured out that people are setting up their products on construction sites, and sometimes buildings that are under construction do not have widespread internet access.

26

I’ve discovered that YouTube has a tutorial on just about any gadget you can imagine.

Just type in the name and model number.

27

Generally when I’m using a device I’m using it because I want to do x.

If it’s not immediately obvious to me how to get device y to do x (and no that icon doesn’t automatically mean to me whatever it meant to the designer of icons), I’ll check the manual, if I can find one.

Half the time the utterly basic thing I want to do isn’t in the manual under any search term I can come up with. In which case I’ll try googling search terms.

Sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn’t. If I really need to do the thing I’ll ask somebody. Or I’ll go do it on device C, on which I know how to do it, and hope the next update doesn’t break it.

Occasionally the answer appears to be ‘you can’t do x on device y’; which I’m likely to discover by finding a batch of people online complaining that you can’t do x on y, or that you can’t do it any longer although the 27.mmm.nnn.yy.z previous versions let you do it.

If it’s not something I already knew I wanted the device to do, then I might or might not trip over the info by accident, in which case I might or might not think it’s a neat feature and learn how to do it. But life is too short to spend all this time trying to keep up with all this stuff. As Dinsdale said, I’ve got other things I want to do.

I’ve just wound up with a new phone. What I need to figure out how to do with it is how to: make a phone call; enter a phone number and get at it again; read a text and respond if I’m dealing with somebody who won’t communicate any other way (no I am not typing on this thing any more than I can help, give me a full size keyboard please); take a snapshot; get the snapshot out of the phone and into either my or somebody else’s computer; use it as a hotspot the next time the ISP goes down; make sure it’s got minutes available; and maybe check the weather if I’m out somewhere and wondering whether a thunderstorm’s en route. Oh yes, and turn off location services.

I don’t actually need it to do anything else, though I’m sure it will do hundreds of other things. I may learn a few other things by accident, but I’m not going to spend my time trying.

It did not come with any sort of guide explaining any of the things I do want to do. The start guide tells me how to put a battery in, charge it, and turn on the phone, and to ‘follow instructions on the screen’. IME there’s a non-zero chance that some of the instructions on the screen will make no sense, and a near-certain chance that most of them will be for things I don’t want to bother with or actively want to avoid. I’ve downloaded a manual. Wish me luck.

end rant. Which I probably shouldn’t have spent time on either –

28

I tell people that I push buttons until the damn thing does what I want it to do. That’s not actually far from the truth. On occasion I will ask Google. If that doesn’t work I complain about it being not very user friendly and blame the designers.

Works for me.

29

No, seriously, this is why people have children. Actually, I fiddle first and if I knew I was missing something I could google, but if they’re nearby, it’s quicker to ask. And actually they’re more likely to find something they want me to do with the phone that I don’t know exists as a possibility and to drill me on it for their convenience.

If it’s green, that’s a reminder that Oldest Son’s phone can’t receive pictures or documents. Blue means I can attach more things than I know how to attach.

30

As far as I know when people are talking about green vs blue text messages it’s imessage. On iphones, texts sent via imessage show up as blue and regular texts are green. Non-iphones don’t do imessage for obvious reasons so they’re always green on the iphone.

31

As a Computer Science prof, I was confronted with this regularly. Time for a new device, OS, software, etc. happened many times a year.

The main techniques I used were to read up on it and to just play with the thing.

While books used to be the main source of reading material, then Usenet, today there’s a ton of stuff on the Web. Device specific boards are a big help. E.g., got a TiVo? Try TiVo Community. All sorts of help regarding menu settings, upgrades, tricks and techniques. For users of Android (and Android-like devices like Amazon gear), there’s XDA-Developers. Find the subforum for you phone/tablet/whatever and you can learn all sorts of things. And on and on.

Of course these boards also allow you to post questions. Be sure to post in the right place, with the right info (model, OS version, etc.) and thank people for help.

Most of the time by just poking around I can figure it out XKCD style. But you have to be careful regarding anything that might do a reset/refresh/clear/erase.

But still sometimes it can be hard to find something.

E.g., on **Mrs. FtG’**s phone I once found a setting so that pressing any button on the phone (yes, it’s one of those) will answer a call. Somewhere along the line it lost that setting. I have yet to find it again. Weird.

32

Yeah, that pretty much sums up my attitude. I wonder what percentage of adults feels similarly? I imagine it is dwindling as we age and die - compared to ultrasound evidence of fetuses mimicking texting activity in the womb, and demonstrated proof of humans evolving bigger thumbs.

The vast majority of my job the past 30+ years has involved creating and editing text documents in WP/Word. Basically, what I NEED to do is create/save/open/print/copy/delete documents/text. Just give me whatever standard font/format, and I’m fine.

I recall one time we got an update. Previously, the commands I used all the time were prominently at the top of the default screen. With the update, I had to click somewhere else to get at them. As a low-sophistication user, I simply couldn’t figure out how to get at the functions I used all the time, and had been using for over a decade. I couldn’t imagine why they would do that.

I often think tech should come with an “IDIOT” mode, where it displayed only the info that the low-level users used most frequently, but anyone seeking more could readily unlock additional functions. Instead, as I perceive tech, it seems as tho the most basic functions/operations are presented with equal (or even lesser) prominence as more sophisticated functions.

Then there are websites. Can’t tell you how many times I check out the website of a store I might want to visit. What I want to know are the address, the hours, and maybe the phone number. Yeah, I understand that a website wants to enable on-line transactions. But it can be ridiculous where they hide the basic info I need should I wish to visit their brick and mortar store.

Looking forward to spending a long weekend at banjo camp in a small town - DEFINITELY an analog environment! :cool:

33

Google will usually tell you those things.

34

IME the information you are looking for is more easily found on their Facebook page. When I’m going to a brewery, I find their current draft list on Facebook, while their webpage is horribly outdated.

35

Coming back to this:

Their intellectual curiosity may be just fine; they may just be curious about different things than you are.

For me, the “tech stuff” is a tool. One of the things I use it for is to feed my intellectual curiosity. But there are an infinite number of subjects in the universe to be curious about, and I haven’t time or lifetime enough for all of them. I don’t want to spend any significant amount of what I have available on the tech tools; I just want said tools to work for what I want them to do.

(Have you got an electronic key to something – or a non-electronic one for that matter? Do you know and understand and spend days on end researching the details of how such things work, what they can be gotten to do, how they’ve changed since the last time you got one, and do this all over again every time you get another? Or do you just want to use the thing to get the door open?)

36

Just want to let you know that I feel exactly the same. Unfortunately, we are in an ever-increasing minority, and I expect to get evermore out-of-touch over however many years I have left.

37

The built-in GPS units I have on two Toyotas and an Infiniti are shit in terms of user experience. Only the most basic functions are intuitive and it is difficult to learn how it works just by trying different things. Editing an existing saved destination, for example, does not work how you would expect and the way it really does work is not easy to find.

38

I’m not so sure, Dinsdale. I think it’s a new-tech-is-fascinating phenomenon. Eventually, any new tech becomes just a tool, except for the people who either make or are particularly interested in that particular tool.

Whether the fact that people are doing their best to design this particular sort of tool so that the tool itself holds human attention will override that factor, I don’t know.

39

I’m a software developer, so I’m reasonably familiar with many basic UI paradigms and can often figure out how to do the things that I want by fiddling. When that fails, ask someone or try Google.

If you have to read the manual, they designed it wrong.

Watching other people use something is also great. You’ll often see them do something that you had no idea could be done. I’ve learned a lot more cool features of many things by watching someone else and saying “Wait. What did you just do?”

40

:confused: Or maybe you’d know about those cool features if you read the manual?