> The reason many people does not regard activities performed with
> computers as "complex" in the modern age is because they have been
> exposed to them long enough to learn how to use them up to some point.
> It is worth noticing that people with actually zero exposition to
> computers - like old people in rural isolated areas - is not able to
> create an email account or launch a preinstalled game without a great
> effort (which counts as learning experience).
An anecdote on this point: In a mildly rural isolated area, there were
some kind of swap shop [1], so custommers can both sell and buy.
To check how their purchases were going, and how much they earned, they
have to use one very old computer: CRT screen, text mode, monospace
bitmap font, light gray background and dark blue foreground, blinking
cursor...
Although, people did not seem to have difficulty to use it:
Enter your custommer number with the keyboard then press the ENTER key:
|_____
*screen wipes out*
Your current balance is: $320
Do you want to use it for the next payment?
Press 'y' key to answer yes or 'n' key to answer no: |_
I have seen someone using maybe faster than what I would do, used to it,
, reading the onscreen indications and doing what was asked. The whole
interface could be reproduced in a shell script only with printf and
read (not an ncurse one).
So it could be simple by its implementation, by its design, and simple
to use even for persons rarely using computers if at all, even
indication on how to interact with the keyboard are provided.
It does not give the impression of being the latest modern software and
it may not look attractive to the majority of nowadays computer users.
This may shift a large amount of user from simple, rather trivial
systems, to much more complex ones, sacrificing sanity.
[1]: http://www.brocantiq.fr/images/midi/31/troc7101.jpg
