What's The Difference...

[kryss_labryn]

Between a button and a picture of a button?

A recent anecdote on notalwaysright.com has an IT person finally figuring out, after fifteen minutes of trouble-shooting over the phone with someone, that rather than following the illustrated directions they were emailed, they were actually clicking ON the screenshots they were sent.

That is not an

Comments

[igenlode]

I'm not exactly technically illiterate, and I always find myself trying to close screenshots of windows by clicking on the close button *within* the screenshot rather than on the program actually displaying it...

[kryss_labryn]

That happens a lot to all of us and after a moment of "why isn't this working?!" most of us manage to figure out the issue, laugh a bit at ourselves, and click the right button.

However, I have had multiple customers who, upon being faced with a page clearly labelled "Download Instructions" with illustrated steps and a large number listed next to each of the seven steps, go through and click on each jpeg next to each step and honestly have no idea why it's not working, even with someone from technical support on the phone saying to them, "Okay, now do you see the yellow bar in Step One? Do you see anything either at the top or the bottom of your page that says "Would you like to run LogMeInRescue.exe"?" They click on the picture, I explain that it's just a picture and to look and see if they see anything that looks like that at the bottom of their screen, and they still keep clicking the damned picture

[igenlode]

we figure out we're just not paying attention pretty quickly and do it the right way

I think that's the difference right there :-)
It's the total inability to adjust worldview assumptions to match manifest reality, which humans are quite good at, really (hence the popularity of sacrificing maidens to make the corn grow, etc.)

Also the complete lack of sympathy with machinery that causes people to do the same illogical and unhelpful action again and again on the hopes that this time it will magically be the right thing to do -- like bashing away at a jammed drawer.