Technology

There is another article I read where colleges had to teach Computer Science majors basic computer concepts like folders because the students relied on search for everything.

It would be like how almost everyone knew how to work on their own car in the 40's and 50's because you needed to in order to get the car to run. Nowadays, you don't need that information to drive a car.

there’s an assumption by older generations that because zoomers have grown up with smartphones that they’ll automatically be proficient with tech as a whole

That's like thinking someone knows how to cook because they can order at McDonalds.

Almost right. Printers and scanners were not built by people. They are an independent life form that just happens to emulate office equipment for their own benefit. They have enabled parasitic entities such as Canon and HP to thrive alongside them, but since there is no ‘design’ involved, they will never really develop the same kind of interfaces we expect from modern UX labs.

It’s also the reason any sane person keeps a loaded gun nearby whenever interacting with them, just in case they make any unusual noises.

I am convinced that printer companies make their products as esoteric and intimidating to the average person as possible on purpose so that they can sell expensive servicing packages to businesses.

This. The core principle of intuitive UI is reusing ui elements that are familiar. That's the reason every elevator has buttons, and that's why you can intuitively operate every elevator you encounter.

The problem is that not everyone is familiar with the same things. Many people of older generations (those that have stopped keeping up with technology) are used to buttons, that's why a blue text doesn't immediately mean clickable to them.

On the other hand there's no right click on phones so younger generations that are familiar with phone UIs may not immediately come to the conclusion that there's more options when pressing the other mouse button on a desktop computer.

It's like they figured out printer firmware/GUI in 1981 and then have never touched it again. They're competing with the TI-83 in terms of longevity at this point.

The scanner part is the only reason why I haven't smashed that damn printer yet... I hate printers so much, I'd rather almost pay for a print service that just ships the printed documents to me on the next day.

as a old timer I feel that it's not that "complex" if you are allowed to experiment without someone looking at you with disappointment. Like there was one time I was trying to figure out how to do double side copying on a machine I never used before, the HR come by and just say you do this print one side and then shuffle the paper into the feeder to print the other side. I tell her that the machine can do double side copying/scanning cause it's similar tray layout I saw in prior company. She let me do my experiment and I figure out how to set the modes and it works as intended. This saved her lots of time having to stick with the machine where she could've just spend sometime to figure out as well. People's pride usually gets in their way of learning.

side note: stick fresh printed paper back into printing machine can easily cause paper jam. That's on top of the risk where you printed with wrong orientation/side if you didn't follow the marking direction properly.

lastly, it's paperless era, please encourage the folks that needs to do the papers to use docusign or something to accomplish the same task. we really don't need to waste all those paper printing information that's only needed for a 30mins meeting. when we can all see it on say, google doc.(or whatever sharing platform. )

A whole generation has been raised with tech that just works and if on the rare occasion it goes wrong, it goes very wrong and either needs IT/Customer Service/etc to fix it for you because the problem is very technical, or it's just broken and you get a new one. This means they have no problem-solving skills because none of the problems they've faced were solvable, and they're scared to get it wrong because getting it wrong breaks things in ways that are bad and expensive. Coming into an environment where trial and error is now not just ok, but expected, is a reversal of some deeply ingrained habits for them. That doesn't mean they can't learn, but it does make it a bit of a culture shock for them.

I work in a job where a lot of student aged people need to send me evidence to get a tax discount, and they are so bad at just attaching a document to an email.

Half of them I get are photos of the documents rather than scans, the ones using iPhones let their phone compress the image to the point it's unreadable and the android users send me a drive link I can't access as I don't have a Google account logged in at work.

None of them seem to be able to scan a document as a pdf and attacging it directly to an email.

There's plenty of zoomers out there with office jobs already and the world hasn't collapsed. They'll learn just like the generations before them learned.

It's insane how true this is. I've actually worked with some kids that have no idea how to use windows, let alone know how to type. It's so odd, and almost disorienting at times, to experience this from both those older than me (parents, etc) and those younger than me.

Perhaps PCs will become obsolete. Even programming languages.

The most useful skill set for Gen-whatevers of the future will be winning an hours long debate with their personal AI on why it should get out of its digital bed and be productive today.

You took the words out of my mouth! I am grading reports and one of the students had to resubmit because they were missing page numbers.

It was resubmitted in time and...well, they technically got those page numbers on there. By manually adding them on each page. No, not in the footer; by just adding some line breaks and typing a number.

Another had the same issue and apparently printed their report and added numbers by hand and then took pictures with their phone and submitted their report as 25 .png files.

It's all good though. They're business students who go on to work with some of the biggest companies and have starting salaries over €50k minimum.

I get really infuriated at times by the lack of flexibility for the sake of simplicity in systems now.

Me too. I especially hate this trend of implying that your computer is a box full of esoteric black magic that you could never understand. I work in IT, I’m reasonably good with these things, error messages don’t scare me. Telling me “something went wrong uwu” doesn’t help me or the users I support at all. Stop insulting my intelligence and tell me what went wrong, or at least give me an error code that I can search for dammit!

To be fair, printers are full of ghosts and demons. Even if you get to know how a printer works for years it'll still randomly just do some crazy shit you weren't expecting.

People always wonder at my skill in picking up unfamiliar UIs, and its always just that I explore the interface thoroughly and press every likely-looking button

It's happening a lot, and I see a lot of boomers using the "haw haw kids stupid" behind it, but it's not them, it's the parents fault, and it's really sad honestly.

I learned typing in 6th grade, we had computer classes where we learned Microsoft and Mac, we learned how to do word and excel. A lot of that got me ready for office life.

Now parents and schools just expect that it's easy, but as we're seeing they may pick it up faster, but unless they have a need to learn it they won't. I feel empathy for these kids who are going to be entering the workforce who were failed.

Absolutely. I'm a Z (25), worked help desk for a little while. It's entirely more individual interest and inclination, generational divides don't necessarily make everyone suddenly tech wizards. It usually just means they don't struggle with their phone much and feel comfortable on the internet.

These articles never are