Computer literacy and perspectives on tech

Perspectives on current state of technology after tutoring adults in basic computer literacy.

Last year, I tutored several adult students on how to use their computers (specifically, laptops with Windows or ChromeOS) and smartphones (both Android and iOS), as a part of basic adult literacy class at a local library. Working as a software developer and using computers since I was a teenager, I knew I take a lot of knowledge for granted. But this class gave me an entirely different perspective and highlighted many of the issues with the current state of technology, and, specifically, UI.

(Keep in mind, this was right before the LLM craze, and those topics would be an entirely different conversation now)

Terminology

Many terms that are used in tech are archaic or cryptic. Having some students struggle with basic reading makes them even more difficult to explain.

Web browser, from the word "browse", meaning to "look through", like books at a library, or clothes at a store. But here, we are browsing web sites and pages... OK, not the worst example,just something I don't think twice about. More on browsers later though.

Many archaic terms are from the typewriter era, adding a history lesson to computer basics. Take keyboard keys, for example.

Backspace... goes back one space. And erases the last typed letter. To be fair, on some keyboards, it is called "Delete". Not to be confused with another "Delete" which erases the letters in front of the cursor.

Enter, like entering a building? More like entering data. Not "new line", or "send", or "confirm", though. Well, some keyboards call it "Return". Because it's like returning the typewriter carriage, but who needs to know that nowadays?

Escape, like get out? Sort of, at least it's most similar to the "back" button on phones. Not really used that much anymore.

Shift, like gears? No, it's shifting into the upper register... again, irrelevant nowadays. Hold to type capital letters and upper symbols on keys.

Tab is... I don't think I was able to explain what tabs are and what purpose they serve. (Since paragraph indentation can be set on the top of the page in Word/Docs) To add to confusion, tab goes to the next element in the browser.

End goes to the end of the line. But to go to the beginning one needs to press Home. More about "home" later.

Holding Control lets the user control the computer. Close enough, no need to mention the control bit on terminals.

Holding Alt lets the user do alternative things... I suppose. It's not widely used in commonly used software.

Print Screen takes a screenshot, but does not print.

Scroll Lock, Break, Insert... mostly irrelevant now. They do not lock the scroll, do not break anything, and inserting copied text is Ctrl+V. I don't even know what commonly used software makes use of them.

The worst offender, is, of course, email.

First, I realized I call everything "email". When I talk about the email address, I refer to it as "my email". When I ask to open the email client application, whether a smartphone app or the web page, I would say "open your email". And referring to the messages I receive and send, I would also say "my emails" and "send an email". I quickly learned to me more explicit.

One does not "write" or "create" a new email message, one has to "compose" it. Like a poem or a musical piece.

When composing an email message, one has to put something in "subject" and put the actual message in "body" (which is often not even labeled!). Trying to explain these terms usually comes down to subject being a title or quick summary, and body being the message itself. But in the era of texting and messengers, putting a title on a message is rather strange.

Clicking "reply" on a message is pretty clear in its function, but "forward" is not so much. Why not call this action "resend to"? (Or even call it "share", as is the case with mobile apps)

And then there is CC and BCC... which really belong in the conceptual baggage category, and I was unable to explain the difference between sending to multiple recipients and putting the same addresses on CC, outside of vague notions of "importance".

Icons

Many interfaces rely on or prefer icons instead of text, but there are only so many recognizable symbols that can be made, resulting in some of them having multiple meaning, and many being too abstract and non-intuitive. Shift from skeuomorphic to flat borderless UI makes it even more difficult to explain how to discern interactive elements from just text. Even popular applications such as GMail use several entirely different styles for interactive elements (clickable button, clickable plain text, clickable plain icon, clickable profile photo)

The de-facto standard hamburger menu icon/button was often overlooked by some students. However, that is understandable - it is literally three lines and does not look like anything.

However, I am glad that at least generally, most of the icons are settled: gear for settings, person for account or contacts, lock for security, speech bubble for messages, etc.

Duplication and contradictions

Some terms and concepts are overloaded. While I know that they are applicable to entirely different areas, I understand why they could be confusing.

Take the ← for example, an arrow pointing left. Looking at the keyboard, this appears on the left arrow, which moves the cursor left. But also, often on the Backspace key. And a variation of the left-pointing arrow, sometimes on the Enter/Return key. And some Chromebooks have the browser's Back and Forward buttons on the upper left of the keyboard, using the same arrows as arrow keys. While all of those are different functions, they all use nearly the same pictogram.

"Home" is another term that is used in several places. Smartphones have the home screen (and used to have the home button), the keyboard has a Home button (which is not related to the smartphone home button), a browser has a home page, a site has a home page, and if student is practicing touch-typing, their fingers rest on the home row.

Conceptual baggage (aka have-to-know)

Some concepts and ideas are difficult to explain because they were established over the years and just happen to be the way they are.

Back to discussing browsers. The four most used browsers are: Google Chrome, Safari, Microsoft Edge and Mozilla Firefox. Note how none of them have "browser" in the name. Long time ago, it was common for browser icons to have Earth, but that disappeared (in case of Firefox, it became a featureless blue sphere). So while, for example, mail apps usually feature an envelope or letter M, chat apps usually feature a speech bubble, and note-taking apps look like some form of a notepad or a pencil, for browsers, one just has to know what they are. (or download a sketchy browser from the app store)

Browser history and the back button is another concept that might be slowly becoming a historical artifact. While I understand that browsers were able to keep the history and cache since the early days on the WWW, this concept was difficult to explain to my students in the current day. Site content changes rapidly, sites (specifically, SPAs) hijack the back button anyway, and there seems to be little value in keeping exact history anymore (maybe keep the domain name for autofill). While ideally, "Back" goes to the previous page, this will only work within the current window/tab for most desktop browsers. So if student opened a link in a new window, they cannot click "Back" to return to where they came from. Some mobile browsers, however, will intelligently close the tab and go to the original page.

Easy to use, difficult to explain

And my most disliked issue, companies making their products easy to use at the expense of clarity, specifically, browsers.

The URL bar in most browsers doubles as a search bar since mid-2010s. This is very convenient to do a search, but makes explaining URLs difficult, because any typo will result in the browser going to Google, which will (most likely) show the intended site as the first result anyway. Although, I have witnessed tech-savvy people googling sites they go to every day.

Another issues with the URL bar is that some browsers hide the URL, leaving only the domain visible. Again, this might make it look cleaner or "simpler", but hides the idea of "URL is an address on the Web".

Google with its AI-powered answers puts a quick end to explanations and practicing how to find legitimate articles for facts.

Conclusion

Maybe a lot of these things are really obvious and aren't worth mentioning. Maybe I am too concerned with trying to explain concepts behind everything instead of showing the simplest way to do everything. But trying to explain these to someone entirely inexperienced with technology made me think twice.