The difference between common knowledge and universal knowledge

In “Tech Tips for the Basic Computer User,” David Pogue points out the difference between common knowledge and universal knowledge. (The piece, which includes a list of seemingly obvious tips, was the most emailed article at the NY Times site for a few days.)

One of these days, I’m going to write a book called, ‘The Basics.’ It’s going to be a compendium of the essential tech bits that you just assume everyone knows — but you’re wrong.

(I’ll never forget watching a book editor at a publishing house painstakingly drag across a word in a word processor to select it. After 10 minutes of this, I couldn’t stand it. ‘Why don’t you just double-click the word?’ She had no clue you could do that!)”

Many readers chimed in with other “basics” that they assumed every computer user knew — but soon discovered that what’s common knowledge isn’t the same as universal knowledge.

It’s easy for those of us immersed in the tech world to forget what it’s like for normal folks to use a computer. For example, it’s tempting to think “we should just do this in Twitter” while forgetting that most normal people have no clue what Twitter is (...or 37signals for that matter).

And if you’re only trying to reach a tech savvy audience, it’s fine to write these folks off. But the bigger an audience you want to reach, the more you need to remind yourself that a large part of your target group is missing knowledge that you think is obvious.

Matt Linderman wrote this on Oct 14 2008 There are 12 comments.

Patrick Burleson

on 14 Oct 08

That reminds me of some of the idioms we take for granted on the web: navigating after a selection in a drop down list.

Watching my dad interact with these showed me just how unintuitive they are for a normal user. There’s no indication they are going to do anything….except I know they will because I work on websites all day. Very enlightening.

peter urban

Very good point. That’s why we always have my mum in law try our products :)

Nathan Youngman

A book on “The Basics” isn’t a bad idea. It’s surprising to me how often people who work with computers 8 hours a day don’t know the seemingly obvious things. Nor do many computer users have the gumption to try to figure things out.

Whether such people take the time to read a book is another story… If I don’t realize that there could be a better way, how do I know to get a book? And am I willing to invest the time?

GeeIWonder

It works both ways though. Rest assured that book editor can’t believe the way you just used “begging the question” incorrectly, don’t know how to punctuate a sentence, or that you have such a tenuous grasp on literature.

Don’t be too self-congratulatory/condescending. And don’t assume that just because you use one of the same tools as someone, an ubiquitous one at that, you use them in the same way or for the same things.

This should be common knowledge of course. ;)

Don Schenck

I was gonna write something witty, but I’m all out.

Marty Stake

Not to be self-promoting here on the 37signals blog, but this exact issue is why we started DeGeeked, a site that answers technical questions with simple answers. Its a small step toward helping bridge the gap, and I hope we can reach as many “normal people” as we can.

Davo

I just learned that MILF means Mother-in-Law-Factor in some parallel words… ;)

Andy

So, if that’s the case, why do you guys stay so stuck in Textile? I mean people who don’t code aren’t exactly exited by having to learn Textile. I mean, I know what 37Signals gets out of using Textile, but to someone who has never written a line of code, even Textile’s a jump.

Jay

@ Andy

I think that’s the point. People are way too eager to bold, italicize, USE HUGE FONTS, etc…

So by making it a bit harder to do that, you can eliminate a lot of noise :)

Alex

Yeah, have you ever heard those stories about people trying to use the CD drive as a cup holder? Hopefully those days are gone, but older generations are definitely struggling.

Paul Smith

Andy, you’re absolutely right. That’s why they’ve totally removed it from Highrise even though a lot of more techie users beg for it in the forums. I think any future apps from 37signals will stay away from textile as well.

Joost Diepenmaat

We offer a very simple service for online invoicing, I thought everybody would understand the idea behind invoicing, and certainly most people do! Although I had a remarkable e-mail last week from a 74 year old guy. The old man is spending all his spare time on making fake knives and other imitation goods for training purposes in medical emergency training scenarios. He wrote me the question “What is an invoice? People ask me for it, but I don’t know what it is.”. I replied to him, and explained everything he wanted to know, like I always do.

To me the question is how far do I need to go, to make things easy? Explaining the minimal basics for very unexperienced user can be noise for average users.