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Joined 3 months ago
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Cake day: October 14th, 2024

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  • Older people rely on logic. And most interfaces are the opposite of logical.

    Younger people have this idea of "press a bunch of buttons and once you see how it works, then memorize the steps ".

    That’s the exact opposite of my experience.

    I tried to explain Windows logically to the seniors in my family. This is a window. This is the taskbar, it shows your open windows. This is a folder, it contains your documents.

    Every time we would start over with these abstractions which are supposed to make logical sense, the very foundation of Windows’ early success with casual users. None of it ever stuck with them.

    They would instead write down every minor step to achieve a specific goal in a specific way, so they could basically control Windows without paying any attention to context presented on the screen. That’s the only thing that worked for them.