Technology just gets in the way

How many times have you had to stop and puzzle something out on your computer today? This week? How much billable time are you losing out on because you need to format something just right but can’t find the button to do so?

Since getting a Mac, I’ve had such a smooth computing experience I sometimes find myself at a loss for something to do. With my windows computers there was always something to fix, a program to update, virus scan to run, and so on. The experience has opened my eyes to two concepts: User interface and willingness to learn.

How user interfaces get in the way of you doing your job
The user interface is what you use to interact with a Web site or program. It’s that collection and arrangement of buttons and commands. And the more of them there are, the more difficult it is to work with something. I’ve you’ve ever seen the new look of Microsoft Office 2007, you’ll know what I mean — Microsoft went to great pains to hide the many of the commands we rarely use, while putting all the usual commands in context. Do a Google search for “Office 2007 ribbon interface” to learn more.

Bottom line here is, every Web site you visit or program you launch forces you to spend time wrapping your head around how to navigate it before you can even start learning anything. Now, I love diversity as much as the next person, but it sure does get in the way. An example? Let’s say you’re looking for the editorial calendars from The New York Times, Newsweek, and Fortune. Each publication stores its edcals in a different place with respect to the others. For some, its all under advertising. For others, its under the masthead. Argh!

Willingness to learn
Sometimes, someone will come to me and ask them for help with something I’d helped them with before. Or help for something that can be easily solved by Googling for a few seconds first. This isn’t a matter of laziness or fear of technology — I think it is out of being overwhelmed. By too much work, by the crush of life issues. Whatever. By the time you have to figure out how to align the numbers on a table of contents, your head explodes!

What would be ideal is this: When you come up against a vexing computer problem, stop everything. Mentally, physically, whatever. (This isn’t asking much — you end up stopping yourself anyway!). Stop and think about the problem. Have you seen it before? What might be causing it? Is it a simple matter of trying to find a command or button somewhere, or is something malfunctioning? Is it possible someone online has encountered it before, and would a Google search help?

That’s my troubleshooting thought process. If everyone thought that way we could focus our IT departments on helping us do lofty things, rather than help us sort out why we can’t color-code table cells.