October 3, 2004

Supporting illiterate Computer Users

There's four kinds of computer users - those who are absolute geeks and kings of the PC. People like myself. When they call tech support often they end up solving their own solutions. Then there are those who know quite a bit about technology - more than most. They could probably put a PC together and MAYBE install a hard disk. Then there are the average users who can use the basic word processor, go online and etc. Finally there are those who can only do what they have been trained to do on the computer. If there's ANYTHING different they can't go on.

With this in mind,

InfoWorld columnist Fred Dickerson writes, So why, 23 years after the birth of the corporate PC, does a stubborn slice of corporate users still struggle with basic computer literacy? As home computers have become nearly as common as televisions and the UI concept of "point and click" has become integrated into everyday culture, the situation has improved during the past several years, but in every office there are still people who are utterly flummoxed by computers. Based on my own anecdotal experience and conversations with other IT managers, the help desk spends about 75 percent of its end-user support time supporting 5 percent of the user base. Anyone who works in IT could rattle off a list of these five-percenters at the drop of a hat. In the meantime, the other 95 percent seem to get their jobs done with entirely reasonable levels of assistance.

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