by francopoli

One of the difficult tasks was to schedule a meeting room in a scheduling application, using information contained in several email messages. This was difficult because the problem statement was implicit and involved multiple steps and multiple constraints. It would have been much easier to solve the explicitly stated problem of booking room A for Wednesday at 3pm, but having to determine the ultimate need based on piecing together many pieces of info from across separate applications made this a difficult job for many users.

Here is the scary stat:

The numbers for the 4 skill levels don’t sum to 100% because a large proportion of the respondents never attempted the tasks, being unable to use computers. In total, across the OECD countries, 26% of adults were unable to use a computer.

The number of people I meet that cannot write a simple email with a direct request for assistance is astounding.