The User Skills of Average Joe - Worse Than You Think - Paul Graham
Channel: NE-RPC
Date: 2020-06-19

When producing software it is expected to receive support queries and issue reports from the user base. It is surprising just how many of these turn out to be questions about how to achieve something within your application. However, if you look into this a little deeper, it should not be *that* surprising that our users find something difficult that we, as IT professionals, may consider easy. A survey of developed countries found that the majority of people are unable to complete medium-complexity tasks, and only a small percentage of the population has high level computer-related abilities. This is something we all need to take into account when building software. But it can’t be all that bad, can it? This talk will show a summary of the results of the survey, along with some key points, to help people visualise the ability levels of the average user.
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Paul is a senior developer at Scott Logic with over 20 years of experience working in the North East software development community. He spends his days developing high quality software that meets the requirements of the client and the needs of their users. He also is passionate about best practices in both UX and agile methodologies and is a co-organiser of the Agile North East meetup. Away from his keyboard he enjoys riding his bicycle up hills.