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Computer Jargon Too Difficult for Office Workers
slashflood writes "Most office workers find computer terms such as javascript and jpeg just as difficult to understand as a foreign language, according to a new survey. A poll of 1,500 staff by recruitment firm Computer People showed that three out of four wasted more than an hour every week simply finding out what some technical term meant. 'A massive 61% don't understand the difference between gigabytes, kilobytes and megabytes and as a result have sent e-mails with huge attachments that have blocked clients' systems.'"
I laughed myself sick reading this article...especilly the oh-so-helpful second page, entitled 'what it all means'.
Here's an especially good one from the list:
With 'helpful' articles like this, us IT professionals should remain in demand for a good long time. ^_^
But seriously, a good IT professional isn't one who's good at explaining the jargon, or getting laypeople to understand the technical isues...it's one that takes care of the issues for the laypeople, so they don't need to worry about them. A correctly managed IT department should be all but transparent to the other people in the office. Everything should just work, with the IT guy making certain the users' needs are met before they even know what they are. In a correctly managed facility, the IT guy's phone should almost never ring.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Among CIOs, an amazingly large number of them think that office workers should have the permissions to turn their firewall off.
A massive 61% ... have sent e-mails with huge attachments that have blocked clients' systems.
A massive number of mail administrators don't know how to configure their mailservers thus allowing this to happen.
I could go on...
In other news people have trouble understanding lawyer speak, medical terms, names of car components, how to build a house to proper code, publishing industry slang etc...
I guess that means people just have to learn eh?
Some people don't need to know what javascript is. They just want to use their computer to type documents and read email. I'd say a good portion of business users need their computers for just that.
As far as sending huge files goes, they still don't need to know the differences between file sizes. People shouldn't be sending large documents through email anyway. A few megs at the MAX. Public drives or a webserver for anything else and the users should be educated on that.
A massive 61% don't understand the difference between gigabytes, kilobytes and megabytes and as a result have sent e-mails with huge attachments that have blocked clients' systems.
And a massive 99% of people don't need to understand that. Mail servers should be designed to ignore e-mails of a larger size than they can handle. It's not up to the users to understand KB, MB, GB, mail server loads, HTTP, FTP, SMTP, SSH, whatever.
Their understand lies in doing their jobs effectively, whatever that may be. When my doctor refers to medical jargon I may not know what it means and may be confused (I'm generally well versed in my particular conditions) so do you really expect them to understand what the jargon in your field is?
Blah.
Proper computing education should be mandatory for high school graduation and equivalent. Not knowing this kind of information in today's world is the equivalent of being illiterate. You wouldn't hire an illiterate person to read books all day. So don't hire a computer illiterate person to sit at a computer all day.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Your average office worker is lazy and doesn't want to learn what those terms mean.
The terms aren't the problem; it's the fact that your average cubical dweller simply doesn't want to learn them.
I've personally explained how to fix a the same problem several times to the same person, yet they keep asking me how to fix it every time it comes up. If they'd simply listen the first time and learn how to do it rather then noding the whole time maybe they'd be able to help themselves once and a while.
Technology, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
"Test Procedure Specification" as defined by IEEE 829, mostly used in government work.
And as far as I'm concerned, workers need to get used to the jargon or take a hike. Measurements and particular jargon abound in all walks of life. If you're making cookies, for example, you need to understand a cup, teaspoon, pint, etc. (or liter and the like if you're not American). If you build a shed, you need to know what a foot or meter is, don't you? In those disciples, you also need to know things like what a hammer is, or a mixer. Computers aren't any different. No one is asking that the average user understand coding, but understanding things like storage space is a requirement.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Well, a more appropriate decision would be to train those that are tech-clueless and help them learn more things about technology. Firing employees because they don't know something they never learned seems a bit harsh, especially since most of those employees could become quick learners at technology.
Empower IT with HR's traditional roles of hiring, promotion, and termination.
And you wonder why people hate IT departments.
Listen, this "holier than thou" attitude is just stupid. Do you know how to diversify a portfolio to meet acceptable risk according to an efficient frontier formula? Well, some of those "idiot users" do. Does that make them smarter than you? If so, should they have veto power on how you run the network?
IT people are not necessarily smarter, despite what they may think. The goal is to work together in a company, and find solutions that take into account problems that employees may have. Which also means that locking everyone's computer so they can't do anything may not be the correct solution. Maybe, just maybe, users occassionly have a need that you're going to have to work extra to fullfill. That's why you were hired, not so you can sit on your duff and complain about all the work that users make for you.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
My secretary just came in and said "my email is broken" Well rather than ask her what the problem is I just went out to see. Seems what one of her stupid Cursor/screensaver/spyware/smiley things locked up and borked the system. I just hit Ctrl+Alt+Delete and ended Outlook, Dog thing (not sure, don't ask) and another unnecessary program. It gave me no real problems and I walked away. She asked what I did, I just say "I am not sure". See the problem is not that they don't get it. The problem is that we try and explain it to people who won't get it. She's 60 and never going to know the difference between 1 GB of Ram and 1.21 Gigawatts. Trying to explain it to her only wastes both our time.
Actually, this is normal.
...
Every field has its jargon that is virtually undecipherable for outsiders.
Think about medicine for example, and the names of medical conditions.
Or think about botany, or construction engineering.
Where the problem lies is that unlike the above fields, computers have become pervasive, and embedded everywhere.
If computers have remained in mainframe rooms with an army of programmers and operators, this would never have been an issue. It became an issue after the PC was invented and made it to every office and every home...
Live with it
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
This is partially a side effect of not understanding the metric system. Cue Grandpa Simpson's quote about gas milage. While certainly a mail administrator can configure this to avoid overflowing their own system, the end user will still generate a complaint as to why they can't send mail. The real misunderstanding is file size comparisions. For example, if you didn't know how big a "gigabyte" was, you might think one or two gigabytes wasn't very large (as far as emails go).
PC Load letter? What the %*&# does that mean!?
You can tell I'm an aries because of my ram.
Using a computer is part of any kind of office job, and plenty of other non-office jobs these days. It's along the same lines as using a phone or sorting through a file cabinet or any other common office tool.
Think of it this way... Worker is given work -> worker does something -> worker produces finished product. That something might include alphabetizing files, or driving their car, or hammering in nails. If the worker couldn't read, couldn't drive a car, or couldn't use a hammer, we'd call them unqualified to do their job. We'd wonder why they were ever hired and when they'll be canned. How is using a computer different?
What is truly amzaing is how we haven't managed to blow up the world yet with all of these acronyms especially when they are so context specific.
To my simple mind, TPS is "Transactions Per Second". "Test Procedure Specification" would never have entered my mind.
If VISTA is the answer, you didn't understand the question
They would if it was gigadollars, kilodollars and megadollars.
This is not a jargon issue, this is bad math.
Alvaro
Measurements and particular jargon abound in all walks of life. If you're making cookies, for example, you need to understand a cup, teaspoon, pint, etc. (or liter and the like if you're not American). If you build a shed, you need to know what a foot or meter is, don't you? In those disciples, you also need to know things like what a hammer is, or a mixer. Computers aren't any different.
/. takes for granted, but it's important to remember that we represent a very small percentage of the populace.
True, but a computer is a device, not a tradecraft. Furthermore, unlike a device like a car or pocket calculator, it is a platform for entertainment and productivity, and it is far more complex than both and truly requires an additional vocabulary to operate it efficiently. And the complexity isn't necessarily the hardware, but in the lack of standardization, the abstraction of the interface, and in the necessities of modern security. The home computer is still a novelty to the general public, believe it or not. Partly because it's still a relatively expensive investment and prone to all kinds of exploits, tricks, and scams as soon as you connect it to the Internet.
Think about evertyhing you must put in place to properly secure a Windows PC, for example. First, you must install a virus scanner. For the majority of users, this *is* a must, because they really aren't savvy about e-mail attachements, message spoofing, and shady-looking websites. Then you need at least a software firewall, which pops up a prompt the first time each app request a network connection -- and the prompts aren't always very informative. Win32 Generic Host Process? Um, okay, I guess. Either that, or you get a router, and that requires hooking it up with the modem and the computer. And God help you if you need to start forwarding ports and setting up wireless encryption. Then there's IE's default settings that allow browser helper objects, referral IDs, and every cookie that gets thrown your way.
So what to do when you don't even know what a firewall is? When you aren't aware of the importance of shrinking down that huge "jpeg" you took with your digital camera before mass mailing it to all your friends and family who have email addresses? There's a lot of technical awareness that
I've flipped jobs more than I'd like to admit, but I usually land in telecom. Despite that these jobs are all in the same specialty and usually java development work, I still spend months trying to understand what's going on in a group meeting. Every worksite has it's own culture (e.g. terms, in jokes, personalities) and much of it has nothing to do with technology.
I'm not talking about ceding total control of the organization to IT, but allowing IT input into HR decisionmaking. If everyone in the company is my "customer" and I have to make them all happy in order for good "total customer service" to happen, then the head of IT ought to have the capability to hire/fire/promote all of these people. It's only fair.
Oh. Well then, accounting should also have a say in hiring. (Including tech people.) As should the mail room. Not to mention the cafeteria staff. And let's not forget the janitorial staff! It's very important that people who understand how to properly read the recycling labels are chosen! After all, it's only fair.
Either train them, get them a "seeing eye dog" IT monkey to follow them everywhere and do things for them, or fire them.
I agree. Has your department taken proactive action to see that all the employees are properly trained or have the support they need?
And, yes, I believe I could manage a risk portfolio. If I can figure out how to manage IT security risk, I can figure out how to manage a company's financial risk position. It's not really that different, just apply a the same types of reasoning and information gathering to a different set of scenario parameters and information.
Oh, good Lord. If that were true, you'd be out making all the money you need, not stuck with "idiot users" in a job you obviously hate. BTW, here are the computations for Modern Portfolio Theory. Knock yourself out. I hope you know where to get the data from and how to adjust the frontier for a variety of inputs, investment styles, tax limitations, bonds, and mutual fund products. (Not that you're likely to know what an investment product is. They're all stocks, right?)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Having managed an IT help desk for a few years and working in IT as a SysAdmin for quite a while, I've found a lot of times your typical desk-sitter is gunshy about asking questions, or calling for help. This has usually been due to being made to feel like a fool by the condescending, "you are too dumb to understand me" IT-types that you find all over this field. I've found that if you take the time to talk to the person AS A PERSON, they are more apt to listen and learn. I continually find that the "unknowing masses" at most of the places I've worked in my career happily come and ask questions, and retain most of the info, when they know that they will not be mentally abused. Of course, you always have the handful that ask the same things over, and over, and over....
So what to do when you don't even know what a firewall is?
You learn. A firewall is a very simple idea - it attempts to keep dangerous stuff away from you, just like a real firewall.
When you aren't aware of the importance of shrinking down that huge "jpeg" you took with your digital camera before mass mailing it to all your friends and family who have email addresses?
Knowing about files and their sizes is a basic part of operating a computer. That's like driving a car and not knowing that you have to change the oil.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
1) good idea. Ignorance of computer terms may be frustrating to those of us who use them fluently, but know-it-alls who overuse jargon (in any field) to appear smarter to novices are just assholes.
2) is Manging Director of Computer People Adam Fletcher's real job title? Is IT Director jargon? ;)
"Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony!"
I can see this from both sides. On one hand, it's easy to say "Users need to *learn* the basics. If they're going to just say "I refuse to be bothered to learn what a megabyte is!" - then maybe they need to work elsewhere!" On the other hand, there's a strong argument for setting up a more user-friendly environment that makes a lot of this unnecessary. (EG. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Apple's Mail application in OS X is smart enough so when you tell it you want to attach an image to your message, it asks you if you'd like it sent "Small, Medium or Large size" and auto-scales to one of 3 reasonable preset sizes suitable for emailing. If this became standard behavior for all popular email clients, most of the problem of clogging mail servers with huge graphics attachments would disappear.)
Like most things, the answer is probably somewhere in the middle. Educate the users on *some* of the jargon, but try to construct an environment where as many technical details are invisible as possible, so they only need to know a few basic concepts to function in the office.
The biggest obstacle I see these days is the tendency for smaller or mid-sized businesses to try to cust costs on I.T. - eliminating full-time I.T. support staff, in favor of going with a service contract or a part-time worker. This does prevent the problem of paying someone to sit around and surf the web, etc. while they "wait for something to break". But it also causes such things as the situation mentioned in the article where users could simply "turn off their firewall" or make other harmful system changes. (EG. Can't send out my email!? Hey, maybe it's my network card settings! I remember the support guy at home walking me though that stuff in my "Control Panel" under "Networking" when I called for help with my DSL!. I'll try changing some of these numbers around in here!) Users are given more "administrator-type" system privileges due to the lack of real, full-time I.T. staff, and they begin tinkering with things, knowing it'll be a while before they get help otherwise. Then you've got much worse problems....
and half the population have IQ's below that...
I'd wager that a fair percentage of drivers don't realize that they have to change the oil, either.
Username taken, please choose another one.
Yes, you should, if you want to make sure that every time you click "send", your new mail really will "appear" in your friend's folder thingie.
> If I shouldn't send a large attachment (individually or in aggregate) my client software should tell me so, and prevent me from doing it, in the same way that an airline will stop me from bringing on a 3 kiloton suitcase rather than letting it get put on board and crash the plane.
If you don't know that "weight" is a property of matter under the force of a gravitational field, and why it's important to pilots, you're going to be frustrated when you exceed it.
Dialogue 1:
Airline: I'm sorry, we can't take the four of you, at 350 pounds apiece, plus your 200 pounds of luggage, in this Cessna.
Moron: Do you know who we are? We paid for our tickets. How dare you discriminate against us? You put us and our golfing equipment on that plane or I'll personally sue your airline into the ground!
Airplane: *crash*
(Granted, any pilot that lets such passengers board his aircraft deserves to crash with 'em. But the point is that an educated customer isn't going to be a moron, because they're going to be willing to listen to the error message "you weigh too much", and they're going to be capable of understanding it, and they're going to be able to take corrective action, by either taking two flights, by chartering a bigger aircraft, or by leaving some of their luggage behind.)
Similarly, if you don't know that "size" is a property of "files", and why it's important to sysadmins, you're going to be frustrated when you try to send big ones.
Dialogue 2:
Client: I'm sorry, I can't send that attachment to everyone in the company. It's way the hell too big.
Moron: This software sucks. Hey, sysadmin! I want to use a better mail software, the one you use! We make the sales this company relies on, and you answer to us! Either I get to email this DVD to my golfing buddy right now or your ass is fired!
Server: *crash*
Same problem. (And same comments about an admin who lets himself get browbeaten into blowing up his own server :)
There's a happy medium to be struck - but ultimately, it can't be solved only through clever UI design. Some user education is going to be required.
Computers have existed in the office for only 20 years, and have changed pretty radically over those 20 years. They're complex devices, and you have to understand at least some of what's going on under the hood to know what's common between a TRS-80, a Sun workstation, and an AMD64 running XP.
We had the same problem with automobiles in their first 20-30 years. The electrical starter, automatic choke, and the automatic transmission are about the only "new" UI developments for automobiles in the past 50 years. (The difference between EFI and carbureted engines didn't affect the car's UI.)
Ironically, we're seeing the usability problem more often in automobiles today than we did 20 years ago - it's not about being able to change your own oil, it's about knowing that oil needs to be changed, regardless of whether your engine was designed for oil changes every 3000 miles or 10000 miles. 50000 miles later, having never had an oil change, the car dies, and the user blames the auto manufacturer for the sludged engine.