The world is awash with people who think they are dreadful with computers - they opine they have the "Anti Midas Touch" and any new IT project they have to tackle will definitely not turn to gold.
Understandable thought that is sometimes - no one can be a master of everything they attempt in life - my question is where did those personal opinions come from and is it a fair assessment?
I read a book by Alan Cooper called the "Inmates are Running the Asylum", which is Alan's take on technology and why it drives some people crazy - and you have to admit he has a point with his theory.
In the bad old days of computing, in the 80s and 90s in particular, many, many software programs were written by developers who excelled at IT, were very nerdy, not commercially minded and got the product finished and out of the door. It usually was shipped to the customer with a massive thick doorstep of a manual that made you feel it could solve any stumbling block you threw at it - except it didn't. Ever.
The problem with having nerds creating programs without any checks and balances from the marketing team is that the geeks created clunky, inflexible, functional bits of software that suited their way of working - but wasn't really designed for Joe Public to use with ease.
What it felt like to use the program never really entered into their heads - the only concern was "did it work", "did it compile", "did it install" and never "how should this work best for end users?"
As a result, many people over the age of 30 will have battled with awkward, frustrating, flaky software that made getting something done extremely painful and protracted. Unfortunately, rather than the customers thinking, "hey these guys have created a pile of useless [use your favourite expletive]", they tended to blame themselves. "I'm stupid", "I make lots of mistakes", "I'm not really clever enough to do this", "I'm not good with computers", "My computer hates me". "Computers are supposed to be complex and difficult". I think that's wrong and a damaging viewpoint for individuals and UK PLC as a whole.
Let's look at an example. Consider this:
Is the end user really stupid if they put a space between the letters and numbers when they type in a postcode? Or is the programmer stupid for not realising postcodes have spaces in them in the real world and making sure their software handled that space, rather than displaying a nagging, error message berating the user for "entering an invalid character". In the bad old days, software always worked this way. After that it probably crashed half way through getting your job done, announcing there had been a "Fatal Error ERR:198a8B3a8br".
These days, savvy tech companies are realising it's important to get customer feedback on how their website works for real people, their gadgets function or their programs help someone "get stuff done" in a fun and enjoyable way. The dawn of Web 2.0 has gone some way to swing the pendulum of control away from the nerds and towards the customer.
However, these companies are still very much in the minority. Plus they tend to be the big household name companies, not smaller businesses. I've never ever been to a business networking event where a small business owner says, "yeah, we checked if customers could use our website without dying of boredom or topping up the swear box trying to dig out our telephone number" - I think that process of checking how it feels to use technology should be made compulsory for business - the online world would be a much better place.
So, technophobes, next time you start running yourself down remember, you're not necessarily a bad workman if you blame the tools - maybe someone sold you the IT equivalent of a pointless solar torch and ran off with your money?