[WEB4LIB] Re: Patron Technophobia [was: Re:Important article]

[Robert J. Tiess]

Nettie Lagace wrote:
> I don't believe that problems with interfaces are due to users'
> laziness or unwillingness to play -- it's more often the case
> that there is only a limited amount of time available to them
> to find the information they want.

Time is certainly a factor, but when a number of students (just
to use one example of patrons) highly proficient in e-mail,
general Internet access, search engines, downloading, printing,
etc. proclaim they have little or no interest in learning the PAC,
that's unfortunate, especially when senior citizesns, with little
or no computer (or typing) experience demonstrate a willingness
and aptitude for learning and do so in minutes with rarely
negative comments as to the interface's complexity.  If you can
find an hour to go into chat rooms and download pictures, you
should be able to set aside fifteen minutes to learn basic PAC.
These are very important skills every young patron should acquire.

Nettie Lagace wrote:
> And per the usual problems with reference interactions, patrons
> often don't know what they don't know, putting an additional load
> on interface designers to plan for the lowest cmmon denominator,
> which wears out quickly as users "become friends with" the
> databases they use most often.

Most PAC interfaces could not be any simpler, while others could
use some simplification.  Almost every web page becomes its own
miniature interface too, and users online, even new users, quickly
adapt to the web environment and are moving through sites and
search engines with relative ease.  In many cases, interface design
eventually becomes a choice between capability/functionality and
ease of look/use (although I believe you can have both) for many
designers, and one resulting example is the ergonomic Windows 9x
versus the more capable Unix/Linux OS:  ease of look/use versus
true power.


Robert