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The 5 Users You'd Meet in Hell

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the what-no-robot-devil dept.

cweditor writes "The Know-It-All. The Finger-Pointer. The Whiz Kid. "Just as a zookeeper cares for his monkeys one way and his rhinos another (we kid — sort of), so too should IT tailor its responses to fit the individual styles of its end users," according to this Computerworld "rogue's gallery of users (and one angel)". Includes advice on how to best deal with the most common types of users, without having to run screaming into the night. Expect sometime soon to also see reader feedback offering other ideas (and, oh, perhaps some disagreement with the article's)."

3 of 649 comments (clear)

  1. IT problem by CarpetShark · · Score: 4, Informative

    That's an IT problem, not a user problem. It should NOT give passwords to active directory, even to the company president. In a fortune 500, that's for the head of IT's off-site safe. No, not the safe with the mission-critical backups; the SMALL, discrete, more secure safe. The head of IT should also have been shielding you from that kind of BS, via laying down his own law at board level.

  2. Re:There are more.... by avronius · · Score: 4, Informative

    Ultimately, this will depend on the type of service that your help desk provides.

    There are different types of technical support available, and your company may employ some or all of those available. They include (but by no means are limited to) the following:

    Tier 1: First level telephone support
    In general, this level of support will assist you with "I can't find the right mouse button" type questions. The people who work at this level are generally very comfortable with the desktop operating system that your company uses, and can help you find applications, sometimes even help you find departmental data. Some companies even grant Tier 1 support staff the ability to remotely control your PC and help you to launch applications in this manner.

    Tier 2: Second level support
    In general, this level of support is called upon when the Tier 1 support personnel have exhausted their flow charts of canned information. This would include problems like, the computer won't reboot or we can no longer send e-mail.

    Tier 3: Third level support
    In general, this level of support will never talk to the end user. This group of people are involved in building the infrastructure, maintaining servers and network gear, and resolving obscure technical problems that are beyond the scope of responsibility for the Tier 2 support personnel.

    It is important to note that there are many Tier 1 support staff who work their way towards Tier 3. They attempt to learn as much as they can about an area - by resolving problems for people that are outside their sphere of responsibility. These people "go the extra mile" trying to resolve problems that you, as a user, should be able to look up and answer for yourself.

    If you are using CAD applications, Geophysical applications, or an obscure 4GL to compile your custom application, you will not likely get the support that you are looking for from the standard 3 tier support infrastructure. In many cases, you will have a contract with the vendor to obtain support directly from them.

    If you are using obscure functions of "off the shelf software", then you will likely end up being more knowledgeable about the product than your Tier 1, 2 AND 3 support staff, as they have no reason to use the software as intimately as you would.

    Your help desk can only provide the service that your company is willing to support. I somehow doubt that refusing to learn an uncommon application feature for yourself on the basis of "it's too hard" will not make you look good to your manager.

  3. Re:Surprisingly common by Rimbo · · Score: 5, Informative

    It doesnt really matter what your usability studies say, a one button mose is really annoying. Whats even more annoying is people who have started to dual boot macbooks which only have one mouse button on their trackpad (!!). In addition to this, you cant tap the pad, like every single other computer, and have it count as a click. You have to use this huge ass stupid button that constantly reminds you that there should be two.


    Who modded this comment up?

    1.) You can tap the pad. It's just disabled by default. Which is a good thing, because every time I try to drag one of my heavy fingers across the pad, it registers as a click on any PC out there.

    2.) Doing a double-click (on Macbooks/Pros that can run Windows) is as easy as putting two fingers on the trackpad and clicking.

    You can also do all sorts of nice tricks like using two fingers to scroll (horiz. and vert.) and things like that. And, of course, you can always plug in a Bluetooth or USB mouse -- the blindingly obvious solution that every Mac critic seems to know about.

    All that said, the Mighty Mouse is dogshit. You have to hit it -just so- to do a right-click, and while that's ok when you're not e.g. gaming, it's really awful when you're trying to zoom in with the sniper rifle and instead fire off a shot that gives away your position. And the little scroll-ball is in exactly the perfectly WRONG place for it to be.